the shape of a human body was discernible in white ashes, into which the
entire mortality of a man or woman had resolved itself. Among all this
extinct dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone, which crumbled at
a touch; or possibly a skull, grinning at its own wretched plight, as is
the ugly and empty habit of the thing.

Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward, so that, through a
crevice, a little daylight glimmered down upon them, or even a streak of
sunshine peeped into a burial niche; then again, they went downward by
gradual descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and deeper
recesses of the earth. Here and there the narrow and tortuous passages
widened somewhat, developing themselves into small chapels;--which
once, no doubt, had been adorned with marble-work and lighted with
ever-burning lamps and tapers. All such illumination and ornament,
however, had long since been extinguished and stript away; except,
indeed, that the low roofs of a few of these ancient sites of worship
were covered with dingy stucco, and frescoed with scriptural scenes and
subjects, in the dreariest stage of ruin.

In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low arch, beneath which the
body of St. Cecilia had been buried after her martyrdom, and where it
lay till a sculptor saw it, and rendered it forever beautiful in marble.

In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one containing a skeleton,
and the other a shrivelled body, which still wore the garments of its
former lifetime.

"How dismal all this is!" said Hilda, shuddering. "I do not know why we
came here, nor why we should stay a moment longer."