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Ost. No, no! here's your health, Fathers; (drinking;) your wine is excellent.

Prior. But that is water you have just now swallowed: this is the wine.

Ost. Ha! is it? No matter, no matter! it is very good too. (A long pause; Osterloo with his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the ground.)

Prior. Shall not our brother proceed with his story, General?

Ost. Most certainly: I have been listening for it.

Jer. Well, then, as I have said, at the door of the stranger's burying vault it stopped, and beckoned me again. It entered, and I followed it. There, through the damp mouldering tombs, it strode still before me, till it came to the farther extremity, as nearly as I could guess, two yards westward from the black marble monument; and then, stopping and turning on me its fixed and ghastly eyes, it stretched out its hands

Ost. Its hands! Did you say, its hands?

Jer. It stretched out one of them; the other was covered with its mantle; and in a voice that sounded—I know not how it sounded

Paul. Aye, Brother; it was something like a voice, at least it conveyed words to the mind, though it was not like a voice neither.

Jer. Be that as you please: these words it solemnly uttered,—"Command the Brothers of this monastery, on pain of falling victims to the pestilence now devastating the country, to stop