Onward, onward they hurried in darkness, rendered more horrible still by the conscious presence of his spectral conductor. At length a glimmering light appeared in the distance, and soon increased to a blaze. But, as they approached it, in addition to the hideously discordant groans and yells of agony and despair, his ears were assailed with what seemed to be the echoes of frantic revelry.
Boyle at length perceived that he was surrounded by those whom he had known on earth, but were some time dead, each one of them betraying his agony at the bitter recollections of the vain pursuits that had engrossed his time here.
Suddenly observing that his unearthly conductor had disappeared, he felt so relieved by his absence that he ventured to address his former friend, Mrs. D——, whom he saw sitting with eyes fixed in intense earnestness, as she was wont on earth, apparently absorbed at her favourite game of loo. "Ha! Mrs. D——! Delighted to see you! D'ye know a fellow told me to-night he was bringing me to hell! Ha! ha! If this be hell," said he, scoffingly, "what a —— pleasant place it must be! Ha! ha! Come now, my good Mrs. D——, for auld lang syne, do just stop for a moment, rest, and"—"show me through the pleasures of hell," he was going, with reckless profanity, to add; but, with a shriek that seemed to cleave through his very soul, she exclaimed, "Rest! There is no rest in hell!" and from the interminable vaults, voices, as loud as thunder, repeated the awful, the heart-withering sound, "There is no rest in hell!" and he who, in his vision, walked among them in a mortal frame of flesh and blood, felt how inexpressibly more horrible such sounds could be than ever was the wildest shriek of agony on earth.
He saw Maxwell, the former companion of his own boyish profligacy, and said, "Stop, Harry! stop! Speak to me! Oh, rest one moment!" Scarce had the words been breathed from his faltering lips, when again his terror-stricken ear was stunned with the same wild yell of agony, re-echoed by ten thousand thousand voices—"There is no rest in hell!"
All at once he perceived that his unearthly conductor was once more by his side. "Take me," shrieked Boyle, "take me from this place! By the living God, whose name I have so often outraged, I adjure thee! Take me from this place!"
"Canst thou still name His name?" said the fiend, with a hideous sneer. "Go, then; but, in a year and a day, we meet, to part no more!"
Boyle awoke; and he felt as if the last words of the fiend were traced in letters of living fire upon his heart and brain. Unable, from actual bodily ailment, to leave his bed for several days, the horrid vision had full time to take effect upon his mind; and many were the pangs of tardy remorse and ill-defined terror that beset his vice-stained soul, as he lay in darkness and seclusion—to him so very unusual. He resolved, utterly and for ever, to forsake "The Hell Club." Above all, he determined that nothing on earth should tempt him to join the next annual festival.
The companions of his licentiousness bound themselves by an oath never to desist till they had discovered what was the matter with him, and had cured him of playing the Methodist; for their alarm as to losing "the life of the Club" had been wrought up to the highest pitch by one of their number declaring that, on unexpectedly entering Boyle's room, he detected him in the act of hastily hiding a Book, which he actually believed was the Bible.
Alas! alas! poor Boyle! Like many a youth, he was ashamed to avow his convictions, and his endless ruin followed.
From the annual meeting he shrank with an instinctive horror, and made up his mind utterly to avoid it. Well aware of this resolve, his tempters determined he should have no choice. How potent, how active, is the spirit of evil! How feeble is unassisted, Christless, unprayerful man! Boyle found himself, he could not tell how, seated at that table on that very day, where he had sworn to himself a thousand and a thousand times nothing on earth should make him sit.