I dare not give the remainder of the scene, except in a very
brief epitome. This company of devils and condemned souls had come
on a holiday, to revel in the discovery of a complicated crime; as
foul a one as ever imagined in their dreadful abode. In the course
of the tale, the reader had been permitted to discover that all the
incidents were results of the machinations of the wizard, who had
cunningly devised that Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sister
to guilt and shame, and himself perish by the hand of his
twin-brother. I described the glee of the fiends at this hideous
conception, and their eagerness to know if it were consummated. The
story concluded with the Appeal of Alice to the spectre of Walter
Brome, his reply, absolving her from every stain; and the trembling
awe with which ghost and devil fled, as from the sinless presence of
an angel.
The sun had gone down. While I held my page of wonders in the
fading light, and read how Alice and her brother were left alone
among the graves, my voice mingled with the sigh of a summer wind,
which passed over the hill-top, with the broad and hollow sound as
of the flight of unseen spirits.
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