The storm continued louder and louder.  The wind, it is true, was nearly hushed, but the roar and the rattle of the echo-awakening thunder fully made up for its cessation, while, now and then, even there, in that underground abode, some sudden reflection of the vivid lightning’s light would find its way, lending, for a fleeting moment, sufficient light to Marchdale, wherewith he could see the gloomy place in which he was.

At times he wept, and at times he raved, while ever and anon he made such frantic efforts to free himself from the chains that were around him, that, had they not been strong, he must have succeeded; but, as it was, he only made deep indentations into his flesh, and gave himself much pain.

“Charles Holland!” he shouted; “oh! release me!  Varney!  Varney! why do you not come to save me?  I have toiled for you most unrequitedly—­I have not had my reward.  Let it all consist in my release from this dreadful bondage.  Help! help! oh, help!”

There was no one to hear him.  The storm continued, and now, suddenly, a sudden and a sharper sound than any awakened by the thunder’s roar came upon his startled ear, and, in increased agony, he shouted,—­

“What is that? oh! what is that?  God of heaven, do my fears translate that sound aright?  Can it be, oh! can it be, that the ruins which have stood for so many a year are now crumbling down before the storm of to-night?”

The sound came again, and he felt the walls of the dungeon in which he was shake.  Now there could be no doubt but that the lightning had struck some part of the building, and so endangered the safety of all that was above ground.  For a moment there came across his brain such a rush of agony, that he neither spoke nor moved.  Had that dreadful feeling continued much longer, he must have lapsed into insanity; but that amount of mercy—­for mercy it would have been—­was not shown to him.  He still felt all the accumulating horrors of his situation, and then, with such shrieks as nothing but a full appreciation of such horrors could have given him strength to utter, he called upon earth, upon heaven and upon all that was infernal, to save him from his impending doom.

All was in vain.  It was an impending doom which nothing but the direct interposition of Heaven could have at all averted; and it was not likely that any such perversion of the regular laws of nature would take place to save such a man as Marchdale.

Again came the crashing sound of falling stones, and he was certain that the old ruins, which had stood for so many hundred years the storm, and the utmost wrath of the elements, was at length yielding, and crumbling down.

What else could he expect but to be engulphed among the fragments—­fragments still weighty and destructive, although in decay.  How fearfully now did his horrified imagination take in at one glance, as it were, a panoramic view of all his past life, and how absolutely contemptible, at that moment, appeared all that he had been striving for.