Page:Singular adventures of a knight.pdf/11

 death, his very fibre racked with convulsion, his beard and hair stiff and matted with blood, his mouth open, and his eyes protruding from their marble sockets, rushed on the fixed and maddening senses of Sir Gawen, whose heart had beat no more, had not a hiss, as of ten thousand fiends, loud, horrible, roused him from the dreadful scene; he started, uttering a wild shriek, his brain turned round, and running he knew not whether, bursting through the folding doors. Darkness again spread her sable pall over the unfortunate Sir Gawen, and he hurried along the narrow passage with a feeble and faultering step. His intellect shook, and, overwhelmed with the late appalling objects, had not yet recovered any degree of recollection, and as he wandered in a dream, a confused train of horrible ideas passing unconnected through his mind: at length, however, memory resumed her function, resumed it but to daunt him with harrowing suggestions; the direful horrors of the room behind, and of the vault below, were still present to his eyes, and as a man whom hellish fiends had frightened, he stood trembling, pale, and staring wild. All was now silent and dark, and he determined to wait in this spot the dawn of day; but a few minutes had scarce elapsed, when the iron door, screaming on its hinges, bellowed through the murmuring ruin. Sir Gawen nearly fainted at the sound, which pausing