The choir of nuns raised their voices, and the bell now clanged quickly with its almost deafening note—and those human and metallic sounds combined to deaden the screams that burst from the miserable girl, on whom the huge door at length closed with fearful din.
The massive bolts were drawn—the key turned harshly in the lock and still the shrieks came from within the sepulcher where a human being was entombed alive!
So sickening a sensation came over Flora and the countess, when the last act of the awful tragedy was thus concluded, that they reeled back to their cell with brains so confused, and such horrible visions floating before their eyes, that their very senses appeared to be abandoning them.
When they were enabled to collect their scattered ideas, and the incidents of the last half-hour assumed a definite shape in their memories, the sound of hymn and bell had ceased—the chamber of penitence was deserted—the silence of death reigned throughout the subterrane—nor did even the faintest shriek or scream emanate from the cell in which the victim was entombed.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE BANDITTI.
The night of which we are speaking was destined to be one pregnant with alarms for the Countess of Arestino and Signora Francatelli.
Scarcely had they recovered from the effects of the appalling tragedy which had just been enacted, when their attention was drawn to a strange noise on one side of the cell.
They listened, and the noise continued—resembling an attempt to remove the massive masonry at that part of the stone chamber.
“Merciful heavens!” said Flora, in a subdued whisper; “what new terror can now be in store for us!”
But scarcely were these words uttered, when a considerable portion of the masonry fell in with a loud crash; and had not the countess and Flora already withdrawn to the vicinity of the door, when the mysterious sound first began, they would either have been killed or seriously hurt by the falling of the huge stones.