An early traveller,
whose dog had led him to the spot, ventured to uncover the features,
but was affrighted by their expression. A look of evil and scornful
triumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and so
terrible, that the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as if
the stiffened corpse would rise up and follow.
I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man, a
stranger in the country, but resident during several preceding
months in the town which lay at our feet. The story described, at some
length, the excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing quest
after the perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplace
matters, in the course of which, I brought forward the personages
who were to move among the succeeding events. They were but three. A
young man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseased
imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous,
and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart
of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature.
The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with
fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute
it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all better
purposes.
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