most part of the recess, forming a sort of dark chamber to the right, about a third of the way from the entrance of the grand cavern, where each occupying one of the stone-blocks, which, from their shape and position, seemed to have been placed there by human hands, they wrapped themselves up in the ample folds of their cloaks, and consigned themselves to repose. O'Gollochar, after satisfying the cravings of hunger with the fragments of the feast, disposed of himself on the ground near his master.

AMHERST had not slept long, when he was awakened by the gripe of a hand seizing upon his wrist, with a strength that effectually shackled him. He was about to make a desperate effort to deliver himself from what, in his halfwaking state, he believed to be the grasp of some unknown enemy, when he perceived his terrified servant hanging over him in breathless apprehension, his knees knocking together, his eyes fixed in his head, and his teeth chattering in his jaws. He was in the act of opening his

mouth, to demand the cause of alarm, when, happening to throw a glance towards the greater chamber of the cavern, he perceived the very figure that had so strangely appeared and vanished near the fountain.

The creature, for human being it could hardly be denominated, though its dress was that of a woman, was, as far as he could judge, about three feet and a half high. Its form, indeed, appearing perhaps still more diminutive, from the vastness of the subterranean void, in the midst of which it was now seen, might have been mistaken for that of a child, had not the disproportionate size of the head, the prominence and coarseness of the features, the hollow eyes, the high cheek-bones, the thin and hooked nose, the skinny lips of its wide mouth, and the deep furrows marking its lean and leathery chops, given it a ghastly look of deformed age. The effect of this was much increased, by the grizzled hair hanging in long and numerous matted locks from under a fillet of red cloth encircling its head, and by the corpse-like paleness of its hue, rendered more fearful by the glare of the blazing wood. A garment of coarse green stuff,

having a tight boddice rising no higher than the shoulders, and leaving bare the scraggy neck, and the thin but sinewy arms, and descending loosely from the waist to about the middle of the leg, formed the whole of its drapery. As the head and countenance indicated age, so, on the other hand, the shape of the body and the bare limbs betokened extreme agility and strength of action.

Amherst at first gazed on the figure with surprise. It was busily employed in heaping up fuel on the fire, which, in consequence of its exertions, had already begun to give forth fresh volumes of flame and smoke, and whilst engaged in this occupation, he saw it lift up logs of wood, bigger than itself, with an ease that perfectly confounded him. As he looked, it went on, placing them endwise, one leaning against the other, so as to form a high pile, filling the intervals every now and then with dry brushwood, and fanning the flame energetically with a large branch of furze. All these actions were performed with inconceivable expedition, the figure wheeling round and round the pile with a rapidity almost supernatural, yet emitting no

sound, save that of a low muttered chaunting, the words of which were lost.

Amherst gazed on this singular being for a few moments. The deep sleep he had just been roused from left him for some time in doubt whether it was not a dream. At length he recovered his recollection, and being seized with an irresistible desire to satisfy his curiosity, by arresting the flight of a creature so uncouth and mysterious, he extricated himself, by one sudden exertion of all his strength, from the iron grasp of his servant's fear, and rushed forward into the main cavern. But the apparition was gone! The noise he had made in his momentary struggle with O'Gollochar had alarmed it, and although only a few yards intervened between the spot where he had slept, and the fire where it had been busied, yet so swift were its motions, that it ran three times round the blazing pile, darted off like the bolt of death, and he only reached the centre of the cavern in time to see it vanish in the thick smoke rolling along the roof, immediately over the heaped up fragments resting against the further extremity of the vault.