you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page
backwards." She vanished.

A fearful struggle raged in the monk's spirit. What hope had he in any
case of escaping eternal torment? And yet--was not the Almighty's mercy
infinite? Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind
and appalled him.

At last the fatal hour came. The steps of his gaolers were heard in the
passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines,
and straightway the fiend appeared--not seraph-like as when he appeared
formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling
around his brows.

He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.

"Bear me hence!" cried the monk.

"Will you be mine, body and soul?" said the demon. "Resolve while there
is time!"

"I must!"

"Sign, then!" Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio's arm, and
the monk signed. A moment later he was carried through the roof of the
dungeon into mid-air.

The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in
the Sierra Morena.