While this conversation had been going on, the poor half-witted man had remained ensconced behind the coffins and broken wall, trembling in every limb. This tremor assuredly proceeded from fear, and not from cold, for the air, which had been sultry all day, had now grown oppressively hot; and the heavy clouds, which had been rolling up during the evening, like a vast curtain between earth and the free breath of heaven, had by this time covered the whole sky; while a few large drops of rain, pattering amongst the ruins of the church and the broken stones and long grass without, formed no unmusical prelude to the storm that was about soon to descend. Scarcely had Doveton spoken (for he it was who took the lead upon the present occasion) when a faint blue gleam suddenly lighted up the inside of the vault, proceeding from the small square window, and flashing round upon all the grim and sombre features of the place, coffins, and sculls, and bones, and broken and disjointed stones, and high piles of mouldy earth, consisting chiefly of the dust of the dead. It came like the clear and searching glance of eternal truth, making dark secrets bright, and bringing forth from their obscurity all the dim hidden things of earth. That gleam flashed upon the countenances of the three robbers, as they stood around the corpse, unmoved, unshaken by the solemn aspect of death, by the awful picture of their own mortality. The sudden glance of the lightning, however, made them each start involuntarily. He who held the crown-piece in his hand let it drop. No thunder followed the first flash, but another far more bright and vivid succeeded, playing round the buckles and clasps of the very sword-belt that one of them was in the act of removing from the corpse. A crash, which could not have been louder had the fragments of a mountain been poured upon their heads, came instantly after, shaking the whole building as if it would have cast down the last stone of the ruin. "By ----," cried one of the robbers, uttering a horrid imprecation, "what a peal!" "Ay, and what a flash!" said another, "but come, take off the belt, for fear he gets up off the trestles and stops us!" "Ay, if we let him," said Doveton; "but may I never speak again, if I did not think I saw his lips move! There! there!" he continued, as another flash of lightning shone again upon the features of the dead man, reversing all the lights which the flambeau had cast upon it, and making the whole features, without any real change, assume an expression entirely different. "There! there! I told you so! Look, he is grinning at us!" "Pooh, nonsense!" cried another; "the man's dead! he'll never grin again. Yet, by my life, there is the blood running!" And so far he spoke truth; for the jerk which had been given to the body in order to detach the sword-belt, had caused a stream of dark gore to well slowly down and drop upon the ground.