'They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,
And in a dark and dankish vault
There left me.'"
Expressions of the utmost consternation and dismay ran through the party. Rosilia again recovering the use of speech, in faint and plaintive accents continued:
"'T is true" said she, "I was there confined a close prisoner, but as a peculiar blessing of Providence, my companions were only those long-withered forms inclosed in their coffins."
She then related that while making a sketch of the monument erected by Doctor Lovesworth to the memory of his father, how instantaneously she had been surprised, caught up, and hurried along into what seemed to her a pit beneath her feet; the faintness which had overcome her; the pale rays of the lamp illumining the vault and discovering to her that she was its only living inhabitant; her efforts to escape; and, finally, what she had the most dreaded, the appearance of Melliphant, and his language, which though brutal, might yet be termed respectful attention upon the words she had uttered: her voice then assuming a soft and tender pathos, a sweet blush dyeing her cheeks, she related what had succeeded when her long and well-tried admirer, in the person of Douglas, came as her deliverer.
"To have rescued you from the grasp of the perfidious Melliphant," exclaimed the General, when
