voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful, and the echoes of it went
rolling and swelling down the endless cave, and mixing with the trembling
of the fire overhead; so that, when he sate down, there was a sound after
him, all through the place like the roaring of a furnace, and I said,
with all the strength I had, 'I promise to come back; in God's name let
me go,' and with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that was
there, and when my senses came to me again, I was sitting in the bed with
the blood all over me, and you and the rest praying around the room."
Here he paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which hung upon
his forehead.

I remained silent for some moments. The vision which he had just
described struck my imagination not a little, for this was long before
Vathek and the "Hall of Iblis" had delighted the world; and the
description which he gave had, as I received it, all the attractions of
novelty beside the impressiveness which always belongs to the narration
of an _eye-witness_, whether in the body or in the spirit, of the scenes
which he describes. There was something, too, in the stern horror with
which the man related these things, and in the incongruity of his
description, with the vulgarly received notions of the great place of
punishment, and of its presiding spirit, which struck my mind with awe,
almost with fear. At length he said, with an expression of horrible,
imploring earnestness, which I shall never forget--"Well, sir, is there
any hope; is there any chance at all? or, is my soul pledged and promised
away for ever? is it gone out of my power? must I go back to the place?"

In answering him I had no easy task to perform; for however clear might
be my internal conviction of the groundlessness of his fears, and however
strong my scepticism respecting the reality of what he had described, I
nevertheless felt that his impression to the contrary, and his humility