“I stand within a rock-bound passage!” exclaimed Adrian, “’tis narrow as the grave, narrow as a coffin, yet twenty yards beyond I see the light of day! Great God give me strength; do not, do not fail me now! Strength, a little strength, and I may yet be saved!”
Prostrate upon the floor of the narrow passage, which the falling stone had disclosed, he turned his body, and, thrusting his face into the gloom of the well, once more gazed far, far above.
“Murderer that he is, I will not desert him!” he cried; “he has been my comrade in the living tomb—he shall be my comrade in the light of God’s own day!”
No sooner did the words pass his lips, than a shriek of intense horror, came pealing down the abyss, a mass of red fire crowned the summit of the well, and hot cinders, and burning coals swept through the darkness of the void, hissing by the very face of Adrian, and marking their flight with long lines of streaming flame.
Adrian withdrew his head from the well and listened.
A low moan, a choking groan, and then a succession of yells, resounded through the void. Then the crackling of flames, then the falling of age-cemented masonry; then a wild shriek, and then a voice of horror—
“I burn, I burn! oh fiend of hell, I burn!”
The air was cloven by the rushing of a falling body, and thundering down the well, with arms outspread, with his face all crushed and blackened, stamped with a look of agony that might never be forgotten, Balvardo was for a moment disclosed by the light shining through the aperture, before the very eye of Adrian, and then there was a hissing noise, followed by a sullen rebound, and then all was still.
The soul of Balvardo, the Sworder, stood beside the soul of his master in the judgment halls of the Unknown.
“Away, away!” shouted Adrian, maddened by the memory of that despair-stricken face; “away from this earth-hidden hell! Strength, my God, oh give me strength, and I may yet be saved!”