though one perhaps more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a
Christian--of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered
the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined and
immediately on his arrival, she requested him to pray for her, as for
one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance
only from heaven.

That you may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event
which I am going to describe, it is necessary to state the relative
position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and
Schalken were in the anteroom of which I have already spoken; Rose lay
in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the
bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the
bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. The old man
now cleared his voice as if about to commence, but before he had time to
begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to
illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she, with hurried
alarm, exclaimed:----

"Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe."

Gerard Douw forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions, in the
immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order
to supply what she desired.

"Oh God! do not go, dear uncle," shrieked the unhappy girl--and at the
same time she sprung from the bed, and darted after him, in order, by
her grasp, to detain him. But the warning came too late, for scarcely
had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter
the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms