Page:Gothic Stories.djvu/20

 bundle of traw, almot rotten with age. “This, Sir,” aid Walter, pointing to it with a malignant mile, “is your bed; I hope you will approve of it. We will leave you to your meditations; you will be but eldom diturbed, I promie you.”

“Bae, datardly lave!” exclaimed Fitzalan, his eyes flaming with indignation. With a contemptuous neer, Walter and his comrade now quitted the dungeon; and as, they fatened the bolts, harh and ruty from the lape of years, Fitzalan felt his heart die within him. He flung himelf on the bed of traw, in a tate of mind nearly allied to phrenzy–a thouand tender recollections preented themelves to him, and every one of them contributed to render his preent ituation more horrible: torn, for ever, from his Edith! from his Edwin! manacled in a dungeon! and, perhaps, on the verge of death; not a ray of hope illumined the dreary propect: before him: “Gracious heaven!” he exclaimed, “if I had been doomed to fall in the fair face of day, on the field of glory, I had indeed been blet: but, to be thus immured and hackled! fated, too, to perih by the hand of ome vile aain, inglorious and unrevenged! thus to fall, and from thoe it is too much for mortal endurance.” In exclamations like this, of mingled grief and indignation, Fitzalan gave utterance to his feelings. Yet, diatrous as his preent ituation was, the thought of the orrow which his Edith would uffer from his los, gave him a thouand times more unufferable agony than the dangers to which he was expoed. Walter and Hugo, after having ecured Fitzalan, proceeded to give the baron an account of the ucces of their miion.

They found him waiting for them with the utmot impatience. “Well, my truty friends,” exclaimed he, the intant they appeared, “is Fitzalan in my power beyond the poibility of ecape?”" “He is, my Lord,” anwered Walter, “as afe as locks, bolts, and the dungeon under the north tower, can keep him.” “The north tower! the north tower!” repeated the baron in a hurried tone, preing his hands forcibly againt his