recommended to the painful situation of appendages to great
families, where their personal appearance and imbecility were
food for merriment to the household. Superior in no respect to
the ideas and manners of his time, the Scottish knight might, at
another period, have been much amused by the mummery of these
poor effigies of humanity; but now their appearance,
gesticulations, and language broke the train of deep and solemn
feeling with which he was impressed, and he rejoiced in the
disappearance of the unhappy objects.

A few minutes after they had retired, the door at which he had
entered opened slowly, and remaining ajar, discovered a faint
light arising from a lantern placed upon the threshold. Its
doubtful and wavering gleam showed a dark form reclined beside
the entrance, but without its precincts, which, on approaching it
more nearly, he recognized to be the hermit, crouching in the
same humble posture in which he had at first laid himself down,
and which, doubtless, he had retained during the whole time of
his guest's continuing in the chapel.

"All is over," said the hermit, as he heard the knight
approaching, "and the most wretched of earthly sinners, with him
who should think himself most honoured and most happy among the
race of humanity, must retire from this place. Take the light,
and guide me down the descent, for I must not uncover my eyes
until I am far from this hallowed spot."

The Scottish knight obeyed in silence, for a solemn and yet
ecstatic sense of what he had seen had silenced even the eager