shadowy and fantastical the appearance of the figures themselves, as imperfectly revealed in the clair-obscur, occasioned by the light of a single candle struggling with the gloom, that had any human eye gazed upon them, the impression produced upon the spectator's mind would doubtless have been (if, perchance, with less of superstition, he had not put a construction equally horrible upon the meeting), that the objects he beheld were embodied spirits of the departed, tenanting the spot, which had burst the leaden bondage of the tomb, and were still hovering nigh the place of their imprisonment.
So far as it could be discerned, the cemetery was of antique construction, and of no inconsiderable extent; its walls and roof were of solid stone masonry, the latter rising in a wide semicircular arch; to it might be the height of some seventeen feet, measured from the centre of the ceiling to the ground floor. The sides of the sepulchre
