clumsy hurry and fear. But how I blessed their wretched
construction! Had I been laid in a stronger casket, who knows if
even the most desperate frenzy of my strength might not have proved
unavailing! I shuddered at the thought. Yet the question remained--
Where was I? I reviewed my case from all points, and for some time
could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. Stay, though! I
remembered that I had told the monk my name; he knew that I was the
only descendant of the rich Romani family. What followed? Why,
naturally, the good father had only done what his duty called upon
him to do. He had seen me laid in the vault of my ancestors--the
great Romani vault that had never been opened since my father's body
was carried to its last resting-place with all the solemn pomp and
magnificence of a wealthy nobleman's funeral obsequies. The more I
thought of this the more probable it seemed. The Romani vault! Its
forbidding gloom had terrified me as a lad when I followed my
father's coffin to the stone niche assigned to it, and I had turned
my eyes away in shuddering pain when I was told to look at the heavy
oaken casket hung with tattered velvet and ornamented with tarnished
silver, which contained all that was left of my mother, who died
young. I had felt sick and faint and cold, and had only recovered
myself when I stood out again in the free air with the blue dome of
heaven high above me. And now I was shut in the same vault--a
prisoner--with what hope of escape? I reflected. The entrance to the
vault, I remembered, was barred by a heavy door of closely twisted
iron--from thence a flight of steep steps led downward--downward to
where in all probability I now was. Suppose I could in the dense
darkness feel my way to those steps and climb up to that door--of
what avail? It was locked--nay, barred--and as it was situated in a
remote part of the burial-ground, there was no likelihood of even
the keeper of the cemetery passing by it for days--perhaps not for