"The man beside me said something to him in a foreign tongue—French, I think—to which the other nodded, without speaking. My guide then went and unlocked a door at the farther end of the apartment, from which he drew forth a great heap of bricks and mortar, and all the implements necessary for building a wall.
"A light began to dawn upon me. The body of this murdered man was to be walled up here.
"My suspicion was correct. Making a sign for me to assist him, the man raised the head, and not daring to refuse, I took the body by the feet, and we carried it into the inner room, which proved to be a small dark closet without a window, and with immensely thick walls. Even in my terror for my own safety, I could not repress a feeling of pity for this murdered youth—for he was only a boy—and the handsomest I ever saw.
"All this time the woman's wild shrieks were resounding through the room, growing louder and louder each moment, as she still struggled to free herself from his hold. All in vain. He forced her into the inner room, but before he could close the door she had burst out, and, clasping his knees, screamed for mercy.
"He spurned her from him with a kick of his heavy boot, and then she sprang up and spat at him like one possessed of an evil spirit. Flying to the farthest corner of the room, she raised her right hand to Heaven, crying, in a voice that might have made the stoutest heart quail:
"'I curse you! I curse you! Living, may Heaven's wrath follow my curse—dead, may it hurl you into eternal perdition! On your children and on your children's children, may——'
"With a fierce oath, he sprang upon her ere she could finish the awful words that pealed through the room like the last trump, and seizing her by the throat, hurled her headlong into the dark inner room where the murdered man lay. Then, closing the massive oaken door, and locking it, he turned to me, and speaking for the first time, commanded me, in a voice fairly convulsed with passion, to wall up the door.
"I would have prayed for mercy, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. The man beside me saw my indecision, and, catching me by the arm, said, in a stern whisper:
"Fool! do you want to share their fate? Do as you are told!
"I shrank from the crime, but life was dear to me, and I obeyed. As men work only for their lives, I worked with those two mysterious masks looking on. All was still as the grave within that closet-door now. Once only I heard a sound as of some one trying to rise, and then a heavy fall—and I worked on with redoubled energy.