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THE PILGRIMAGE OF BERENICE,

had grasped on hearing the first near reverberating sound; and without turning again to the scene in the valley, rushed down the interior declivity, towards the thicket paths of the mount. But his heart did not cease denouncing its meditated triumph, over all that then caused such mortal throes of hatred and revenge. A thirst for private, glutting, personal vengeance; the dastard’s possessing fiend, whose very existence within him, he would have doubted, till it tore him thus, and it made him hate the cause the more, since it even moved him now, to disdain himself.

Full of these inward contentions, he hurried on; but had hardly cleared the rough descent of the promontory steep, and turned a sweep of the lower hill, towards the woods, in which he meant for awhile to bury himself and thoughts, ere he perceived a wide vista-like ravine; hung with abundant shade indeed, but opening westward to the sky; and where he knew its flanking cliffs must at that point face Jerusalem. One of them projected forward in the manner of the one he had just left, but was of less amplitude, and elevation in the mount; yet it, too, overlooked the valley of Jehoshaphat; and on its summit he saw his daughter standing—a few paces nearer to its extreme edge, than her less rapt or adventurous companions had yet advanced. The receding rays of the quickly sinking sun still shot upwards, tinging with a golden silvery light the floating transparency of her garments. Her white arms, whence the long draperies of her veil depended like a fleecy cloud, were stretched out in the devout position of the cross to wards the opposite bill, while she appeared to bend over the valley.

The teeth of the cavalier again ground against each other, while he beheld her in this action; so like a benediction of his enemy, while taking his proud course beneath. And then, with a deepening gloom, he smiled haughtily to himself; What,” cried he, inwardly, are words of any kind?-when the deed is in my power!”

Berenice knelt down, even on the awful brink where she had stood; and her companions, gathering courage from her example, took their kneeling places beside, or close behind her. And then, with their voices uniting occasionally in harmonious cadence with her’s, she began a strain of such entrancing melody, such resistless pathos, that her father