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BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
I saw great Satan like a sexton stand
With his intolerable spade in hand.
Charles Lamb.
Within the deep recesses of a vault, the last abiding place of an ancient family—many generations of whose long line were there congregated—and at midnight's dreariest hour, two figures might be discovered, sitting, wrapt in silence as profound as that of the multitudinous dead around them. Beings of this nether world they seemed, yet so moveless was the attitude of each, so breathless the repose maintained, and so
