'Bring forth the dead!'
'Bring forth the dead!'—they all repeated, until the cavern rang with a thousand echoes.
The banditti now stood in a line, stretching from one end of the room to the other, and remained some time in silence. Directly a dead body—mutilated and bloody—was borne by some invisible agency into our presence. It rested upon a bier—without pall or other covering—a spectacle too horrible for description. I thought, at first, that it was some optical delusion—but, alas! it proved a fearful reality—a dread and reckless assassination, prompted by that hellish and vindictive spirit, which appeared so exclusively to govern the ruffians with whom I was voluntarily associated. The victim before me was a transgressor of their laws; and this punishment had been dealt out to him as the reward of his perfidy. Life, to all appearance, was extinct; but the sluggish and inert clay still remained, as if in mockery of all law—all humanity—all mercy.
'Behold the traitor!'—exclaimed one of the number.
'Behold the traitor!'—they all repeated in concert.
'Bear away the dead!'—commanded the priest at the altar.
'Bear away the dead! bear away the dead!'—was reiterated in succession by every tongue, until the lifeless body disappeared—and with it the fiendish revellers who had sported so terrifically in its presence.
We have only to say, that if our readers are not absolutely petrified after all this conglomeration of horrors, it is no fault either of Paul Ulric's, Morris Mattson's, or Dingy O'Dirty's.
Miss Emily Florence is at length rescued, and with her lover, is rowed down some river in a skiff by Dingy, who thus discourses on the way. We quote the passage as a specimen of exquisite morality.
"Had I the sensibility of many men, a recollection of my crimes would sink me into the dust—but as it is, I can almost fancy them to be so many virtues. I see you smile; but is it not a truth, that every thing of good and evil exists altogether in idea? The highwayman is driven by necessity to attack the traveller, and demand his purse. This is a crime—so says the law—so says society—and must be punished as our wise men have decreed. Nations go to war with each other—they plunder—burn—destroy—and murder—yet there is nothing wrong in this, because nations sanction it. But where is the difference between the highwayman, in the exercise of a profession by which he is to obtain a livelihood, and a nation, with perhaps less adequate cause, which despoils another of its treasures, and deluges it in blood? Is not this a proof that our ideas of immorality and wickedness are derived in a great measure from habit and education?" "The metaphysical outlaw," [says our hero,] "the metaphysical outlaw here concluded his discourse." [What an excessively funny idea Mr. Mattson must have of metaphysics!]