The next moment he was so close to it, that he could pass
his sword-point over parts of its rugged surface. He had scarcely
examined thus a space of more than ten yards, before his weapon
encountered a sharp, jagged edge; and a sudden presentiment assured him
instantly that he had found the spot where he had beheld the momentary
light, and that he stood on the same stone which had been occupied by
the figure of the man.
After an instant's hesitation, he was about to mount higher on the loose
stones, and examine more closely the irregularity he had just discovered
in the wall, when a vivid flash of lightning, unusually prolonged,
showed him, obstructing at scarcely a yard's distance his onward path,
the figure he had already distantly beheld from the plain behind.
There was something inexpressibly fearful in his viewless vicinity,
during the next moment of darkness, to this silent, mysterious form, so
imperfectly shown by the lightning that quivered over its half-revealed
proportions. Every pulse in the body of the Goth seemed to pause as he
stood, with ready weapon, looking into the gloomy darkness, and wafting
for the next flash.
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