Page:The Necromancer, or, The Tale of the Black Forest Vol. 1.djvu/164

 of secret awe. He beckoned us to follow him, and we obeyed his solemn command like machines, forgetting where we were.

He led the way, with tottering knees, in awful solemn silence, and we followed him with beating hearts, expecting to behold unheard and wondrous things. We stepped into a spacious room, in the back part of which we saw a little door, Volkert opened it, leading us through an empty narrow anti-chamber to a folding door; there he stopped, looking back with a ghastly boding aspect, and put the key in the lock—now he turned it slowly and carefully, the folding door flew suddenly open, a thick smoke broke from it, as we entered, and darkened at first all the objects around.

'Ere long, I observed in the back part of the spacious apartment a human figure clad in a white garment. The smoke evaporated by degrees through the open door, and the figure grew brighter and brighter, and, ad-