Transcriber’s Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfullyas possible, including inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation.
Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made.They are marked likethis in the text. The original text appears when hovering the cursorover the marked text. A list of amendments isat the end of the text.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “BERTRAM,” &c.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY,
AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. CHEAPSIDE,
LONDON.
1820.
“I ran on till I had no longer breath orstrength, (without perceiving that I wasin a dark passage), till I was stopt by adoor. In falling against it, I burst it open,and found myself in a low dark room.When I raised myself, for I had fallen onmy hands and knees, I looked round, andsaw something so singular, as to suspendeven my personal anxiety and terror for amoment.
“The room was very small; and I couldperceive by the rents, that I had not onlybroken open a door, but a large curtainwhich hung before it, whose ample foldsstill afforded me concealment if I requiredit. There was no one in the room, and Ihad time to study its singular furniture atleisure.
“There was a table covered with cloth;on it were placed a vessel of a singular construction,a book, into whose pages I looked,but could not make out a single letter.I therefore wisely took it for a book of magic,and closed it with a feeling of exculpatoryhorror. (It happened to be acopy of the Hebrew Bible, marked withthe Samaritan points). There was a knifetoo; and a cock was fastened to the leg ofthe table, whose loud crows announced hisimpatience of further constraint(1).
“I felt that this apparatus was somewhatsingular—it looked like a preparationfor a sacrifice. I shuddered, andwrapt myself in the volumes of the draperywhich hung before the door my fallhad broken open. A dim lamp, suspendedfrom the ceiling, discovered to me all theseobjects, and enabled me to observe whatfollowed almost immediately. A man ofmiddle age, but whose physiognomy hadsomething peculiar in it, even to the eyeof a Spaniard, from the clustering darknessof his eye-brows, his prominent nose, anda certain lustre in the balls of his eyes, entered the room, knelt before the table, kissedthe book that lay on it, and read fromit some sentences that were to precede, as Iimagined, some horrible sacrifice;—felt theedge of the knife, knelt again, utteredsome words which I did not unders