away the wild beasts unknown to this land--more important than light to a
lamp, is the strength to your frame, weak magician! What will support you
through six weary hours of night-watch?"

"Hope," answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style. "Hope!
I shall live,--I shall live through the centuries!"




CHAPTER LXXXVI.

One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in the
sullen sultry air. The materials within began to seethe, and their
colour, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; from time
to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had done so
reseating herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees,
and her face hid under her veil.

The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now began to
pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel. As yet
nothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the
circle,--nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-like
click of the locusts, and, farther still, in the forest, the howl of the
wild dogs, that never bark; nothing visible, but the trees and the
mountain-range girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of
the cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of dry
bones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom.

The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the side