workings of curiosity. He led the way, with considerable
accuracy, through the various secret passages and stairs by which
they had ascended, until at length they found themselves in the
outward cell of the hermit's cavern.

"The condemned criminal is restored to his dungeon, reprieved
from one miserable day to another, until his awful Judge shall at
length appoint the well-deserved sentence to be carried into
execution."

As the hermit spoke these words, he laid aside the veil with
which his eyes had been bound, and looked at it with a suppressed
and hollow sigh. No sooner had he restored it to the crypt from
which he had caused the Scot to bring it, than he said hastily
and sternly to his companion; "Begone, begone--to rest, to rest.
You may sleep--you can sleep--I neither can nor may."

Respecting the profound agitation with which this was spoken, the
knight retired into the inner cell; but casting back his eye as
he left the exterior grotto, he beheld the anchorite stripping
his shoulders with frantic haste of their shaggy mantle, and ere
he could shut the frail door which separated the two compartments
of the cavern, he heard the clang of the scourge and the groans
of the penitent under his self-inflicted penance. A cold shudder
came over the knight as he reflected what could be the foulness
of the sin, what the depth of the remorse, which, apparently,
such severe penance could neither cleanse nor assuage. He told
his beads devoutly, and flung himself on his rude couch, after a
glance at the still sleeping Moslem, and, wearied by the various
scenes of the day and the night, soon slept as sound as infancy.