'Bravo!' exclaimed O'Dougherty, 'you must now be introduced to the high priest of our order. He has taken his seat at the altar--prepared for your reception. I will retire that you may do him reverence--trusting soon to hail you as a brother.' The curtains about the altar had been grouped up, and there, indeed, sat the high dignitary in all his splendor. He was closely masked, and reclined in a high-backed chair, with his head turned carelessly to one side, with an expression of the most singular good humor. At that moment, also, there issued from numerous recesses, which I had not hitherto observed, a number of grotesque-looking shapes, not unlike the weird sisters in Macbeth, who quietly took their stations around the apartment, and fixed upon me their fearful and startling gaze. Their garments were hanging in shreds--an emblem, perhaps, of their own desperate pursuits. Their faces were daubed with paint of various colors, which gave them a wild and fiendish aspect. Each one grasped a long knife, which he brandished furiously above his head, the blades sometimes striking heavily together. They then sprang simultaneously forward, forming themselves into a circle, while one stationed himself as the centre, around whom they slowly moved with dismal and half-suppressed groans. They continued this ceremony until some one exclaimed-- 'Bring forth the dead!' 'Bring forth the dead!'--they all repeated, until the cavern rang with a thousand echoes. The banditti now stood in a line, stretching from one end of the room to the other, and remained some time in silence. Directly a dead body--mutilated and bloody--was borne by some invisible agency into our presence. It rested upon a bier--without pall or other covering--a spectacle too horrible for description. I thought, at first, that it was some optical delusion--but, alas! it proved a fearful reality--a dread and reckless assassination, prompted by that hellish and vindictive spirit, which appeared so exclusively to govern the ruffians with whom I was voluntarily associated. The victim before me was a transgressor of their laws; and this punishment had been dealt out to him as the reward of his perfidy. Life, to all appearance, was extinct; but the sluggish and inert clay still remained, as if in mockery of all law--all humanity--all mercy. 'Behold the traitor!'--exclaimed one of the number. 'Behold the traitor!'--they all repeated in concert. 'Bear away the dead!'--commanded the priest at the altar. 'Bear away the dead! bear away the dead!'--was reiterated in succession by every tongue, until the lifeless body disappeared--and with it the fiendish revellers who had sported so terrifically in its presence. We have only to say, that if our readers are not absolutely petrified after all this conglomeration of horrors, it is no fault either of Paul Ulric's, Morris Mattson's, or Dingy O'Dirty's.