220 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



heaped eurses upon his head ; at the next, convinced 

 that he had fallen, he bewailed with equal bitterness 

 his grandson's fate and his own. He paced the tomb 

 like one distracted ; he stamped upon the iron plate ; 

 he smote with his hands upon the door : he shouted, 

 and the vault hollowly echoed his lamentations. 

 But Time's sand ran on, and Luke arrived not. 



' Alan now abandoned himself wholly to despair. 

 He could no longer anticipate his grandson's coming — 

 no longer hope for deliverance. His fate was sealed. 

 Death awaited him. He must anticipate his slow 

 but inevitable stroke, enduring all the grinding horrors 

 of starvation. The contemplation of such an end was 

 madness, but he was forced to contemplate it now ; 

 and so appalling did it appear to his imagination, 

 that he half resolved to dash out his brains against 

 the walls of the sepulchre, and put an end at once 

 to his tortures ; and nothing, except a doubt whether 

 he might not, by imj^erfectly accomplishing his 

 purpose, increase his own suffering, prevented him 

 from putting this dreadful idea into execution. His 

 dagger was gone, and he had no other weapon. Terrors 

 of a new kind now assailed him. The dead, he fancied, 

 were bursting from their coffins, and he peopled the 

 darkness with grisly phantoms. They were round 

 about him on each side, whirling and rustling, gibbering, 

 groaning, shrieking, laughing, and lamenting. He 

 Avas stunned, stifled. The air seemed to grow 

 suffocating, pestilential ; the wild laughter was 

 redoubled ; the horrible troop assailed him ; they 

 dragged him along the tomb, and amid their howls 

 he fell, and became insensible. 



' When he returned to himself, it was some time 

 before he could collect his scattered faculties ; and 

 when the agonising consciousness of his terrible 

 situation forced itself upon his mind, he had nigh 

 relapsed into oblivion. He arose. He rushed towards 

 the door : he knocked against it with his knuckles 

 till the blood streamed from them ; he scratched 

 against it with his nails till they were torn off by the 



