These dreadful words were spoken at intervals, and loud groans bespoke the agony of the sufferer. The individual who heard them, at a loss what to conceive, became alarmed, ran away to get assistance, and, in a short time, returned, with a companion and a light, to search among the old ruins for the individual who was thus apparently suffering under the imagined terrors of the last place of punishment. They looked carefully up and down throughout the place called the Magazine, among the ruins of the castle, and in every hole and cranny of the neighbourhood, but neither could they see any human being, nor hear again any of the extraordinary sounds which had chained the ear of the listener, and roused his terrors. The idea of a supernatural presence was the first that presented itself; and a ghost giving its hollow utterance to the lamentations of its suffering spirit, confined, doubtless, in some of the vaults of the castle, and struggling for that liberty which depends upon the performance of some penance upon earth, was the ready solution of a difficulty which defied all recourse to ordinary means of explanation. Having ascertained that nothing was to be seen or heard, the two friends returned to the town, where they told what had happened. The disappearance about that time of W---- B---- suggested to many a more rational explanation of the mysterious affair; and a number of people adjourned to the Magazine, for the purpose of exploring its dark recesses more thoroughly, under the conviction that the missing individual might be concealed in some part that had not been searched. Every effort was employed, in vain. They penetrated all the holes, and explored all the dark corners--nothing was to be seen, nothing heard; and the conclusion was arrived at, either that the narrator was deceiving or deceived, or that the spirit had ceased to issue its lamentations.