something soft and clammy to the touch like moss or wet velvet.
Fingering this with a kind of repulsion, I soon traced out the
oblong shape of a coffin Curiously enough, I was not affected much
by the discovery. I found myself monotonously counting the bits of
raised metal which served, as I judged, for its ornamentation. Eight
bits lengthwise--and the soft wet stuff between--four bits across;
then a pang shot through me, and I drew my hand away quickly, as I
considered--WHOSE coffin was this? My father's? Or was I thus
plucking, like a man in delirium, at the fragments of velvet on that
cumbrous oaken casket wherein lay the sacred ashes of my mother's
perished beauty? I roused myself from the apathy into which I had
fallen. All the pains I had taken to find my way through the vault
were wasted; I was lost in the profound gloom, and knew not where to
turn. The horror of my situation presented itself to me with
redoubled force. I began to be tormented with thirst. I fell on my
knees and groaned aloud.

"God of infinite mercy!" I cried. "Saviour of the world! By the
souls of the sacred dead whom Thou hast in Thy holy keeping, have
pity upon me! Oh, my mother! if indeed thine earthly remains are
near me--think of me, sweet angel in that heaven where thy spirit
dwells at rest--plead for me and save me, or let me die now and be
tortured no more!"

I uttered these words aloud, and the sound of my wailing voice
ringing through the somber arches of the vault was strange and full
of fantastic terror to my own ears. I knew that were my agony much
further prolonged I should go mad. And I dared not picture to myself
the frightful things which a maniac might be capable of, shut up in
such a place of death and darkness, with moldering corpses for