forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition—a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!

“Where be these dog-priests now,” growled the baron, “who set such price on their ghostly mummery?—where be all those unshod Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-Bœuf founded the convent of St. Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close—where be the greedy hounds now?—Swilling, I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl.—Me, the heir of their founder—me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for—me—ungrateful villains as they are!—they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!—Tell the Templar to come hither—he is a priest, and may do something.—But no!—as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.—I have heard old men talk of prayer—prayer by their own voice—such need not to court or to bribe the false priest—but I—I dare not!”

“Lives Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, “to say there is that which he dares not!”

The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Bœuf heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, “Who is there?—what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?—Come before my couch that I may see thee.”

“I am thine evil angel, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” replied the voice.

“Let me behold thee, then, in thy bodily shape, if thou be’st indeed a fiend,” replied the dying knight; “think not that I will blench from thee. By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that I shrunk from the conflict.”

“Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” said the almost unearthly voice, “on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!—Who stirred up the licentious John to war against his gray-headed father—against his generous brother?”

“Be thou fiend, priest, or devil,” replied Front-de-Bœuf, “thou liest in thy throat!—Not I stirred John to rebellion—not I alone—there were fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties—better men never laid lance in rest. And must I answer for the fault done by fifty?—False fiend, I defy thee! Depart, and haunt my couch no more—let me die in peace if thou be mortal—if thou be a demon, thy time is not yet come.”

“In peace thou shalt NOT die,” repeated the voice; “even in death shalt thou think on thy murders—on the groans which this castle has echoed—on the blood that is engrained in its floors!”

“Thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice,” answered Front-de-Bœuf, with a ghastly and constrained laugh. “The infidel Jew—it was merit with Heaven to deal with him as I did, else wherefore are men canonised who dip their hands in the blood of Saracens?—The Saxon porkers, whom I have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of my liege lord.—Ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of plate.—Art thou fled?—Art thou silenced?”

“No, foul parricide!” replied the voice; “think of thy father!—think of his death!—think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that poured forth by the hand of a son!”