At this
moment he would have appeared from a distance, like a phantom of fire
perishing in a mist of darkness; like a Gnome in adoration in the bowels
of the earth; like a forsaken spirit in a solitary purgatory, watching
for the advent of a glimpse of beauty, or a breath of air.
At length he aroused himself from his trance, trimmed with careful hand
his guiding lantern, and set forward to penetrate the breadth of the
great rift he had just entered.
He moved on in an oblique direction several feet, now creeping over the
tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities of
protrusions in the ruined brick-work, now descending into dark slimy
rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all
directions.
The atmosphere was warmer in the place he now occupied; he could faintly
distinguish patches of dark moss, dotted here and there over the uneven
surface of the wall; and once or twice, some blades of long flat grass,
that grew from a prominence immediately above his head, were waved in
his face by the wind, which he could now feel blowing through the narrow
fissure that he was preparing to enlarge.
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