Yet, however deformed might be their other features, the eyes of all were preserved unimpaired.

Speechless and bodiless, they floated in unceasing myriads up to the fantastic trellis-work, which seemed to swell its wild proportions to receive them.

There they clustered, in their goblin amphitheatre, and fixed and silently they all glared down, without one exception, on the Pagan's face! Meanwhile, the walls at the side began to gleam out with a light of their own, making jagged boundaries to the midway scene of phantom faces.

Then the rifts in their surfaces widened, and disgorged misshapen figures of priests and idols of the old time, which came forth in every hideous deformity of aspect, mocking at the faces on the trellis-work; while behind and over the whole, soared shapes of gigantic darkness, robed in grim cloudy resemblances of skins such as were worn by the Goths, and wielding through the quivering vapour, mighty and shadow-like weapons of war.

From the whole of this ghastly assemblage there rose not the slightest sound.