.."
"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder.
Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled,
from the battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank in
a dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. The
light faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before,
for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sank
into thickening darkness,--and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashy
light more fearful.
In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran up
and down and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid,
black, terrible in its frowning massiveness.
Straightway I alighted at the gate,--a dismal crevice hewn into the
dripping rock. The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him at
once; who does not?--the Arch Enemy of mankind. He cocked his eye at
me in an impudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. I saw
that I was not to be treated like a gentleman.
"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face,"
what are you sent here for?
"For using tobacco," I replied.
"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's what
most of 'em are sent here for now.
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