Laying his left hand on his dagger, he turned suddenly, and looked behind him, but there was no one there, and he saw nothing but the heavy stone walls and low groined arches, which seemed spreading out interminably on either side. The next moment a bat fluttered across, and swept his face with its cold dewy wing, nearly extinguishing the lamp as it passed; and then, as he took a few steps forward, a low voice asked, "Who is he?" "Who? who?" several other voices seemed to say; and then another cried, "Hush!" The young man caught the lamp in his left hand, and half drew his sword with his right, demanding aloud, "Who spoke?" There was no reply but the echo of his own voice amidst the arches; and holding the lamp before him, he turned to the side from which the first question seemed to proceed, and thought he saw a figure standing in the dim obscurity, at a few paces distance. "Who are you?" he cried, stepping forward, but there the figure stood, grew more defined as the rays fell upon it, and the eyeless grinning head, and long mouldy bones of a skeleton appeared, bound with a rusty chain to a thick column. Instinctively he started back, when he first discovered what the object was, and as he did so, a low, wild, echoing laugh rang round through the arches on every side, as if mocking the horror which his countenance expressed. Nothing showed itself, however, and, ashamed of his own sensations, he drew his sword out of the sheath, and walked quickly on. His path soon became encumbered, and first he stumbled over a slimy skull, then trod upon some bones that cranched under his feet, while strange whisperings seemed to spread around him, till, with no light joy, he saw the farther wall of the vault, with an open arch leading out into some place beyond. When he had passed it, however, the scene was no less sad and gloomy, for he seemed now in a vast building like a chapel, where, ranged on either hand, were sepulchral monuments covered with dust, and between them long piles of mouldering coffins, with overhead a banner here and there, gauntlets, and swords, and tattered surcoats, the hues of which could scarcely be distinguished through the deep stains and mildew that covered them. Here frowned the figure of a warrior in black marble, there lay another hewn in plain stone; here stood a pile of coffins, with the velvet which once covered them, and the gold with which they were fringed, all mouldering in shreds, and offering a stern comment on the grossest of human vanities, that tries to deck the grave with splendour, and serves up the banquet of the worm in tinsel. When he had half passed along the solemn avenue, he thought he heard a sound behind, and turned to look, but there was nothing near except three small coffins and the marble effigy of a lady kneeling in the attitude of prayer. When he turned round again, a sudden light, blue and pale, like that of the unconfirmed dawn, shone through the long arcades, wavered and