Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared to have reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the stream whose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with the swift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparition faded slowly from sight. "It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He has forded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let this thing come to pass!" He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow. The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering words in a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walk round and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flame which danced on the surface of the burning charcoal. When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made him kneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it. Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain. The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keep pace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in an interminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished, invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it became but a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into a torch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowled figure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries, strangled, interminable caves. "Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumes and the fear that was upon him. "Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever to your schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head." "What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded. "If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss you shall see," came the reply. A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats. "Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "When Death brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in her dark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are you content?" There was a pause. The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones against the time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower. "Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with a choking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts and wither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand." The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance. "The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands, shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, the one to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wild dream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the dark galleries of fear, till you reach the goal."