About forty persons
were sitting in dead silence upon the circular steps of the altar. They
did not seem to move; and as I entered and advanced, the echo of my
footsteps rang through the building with a lonely distinctness, which
added to the solemnity and mystery of the circumstances about me. The
windows were secured with shutters on the inside, and on the altar a
candle was lighted, which burned dimly amid the surrounding darkness,
and lengthened the shadow of the altar itself, and those of six or
seven persons who stood on its upper steps, until they mingled in the
obscurity which shrouded the lower end of the chapel. The faces of the
men who sat on the altar steps were not distinctly visible, yet their
prominent and more characteristic features were in sufficient relief,
and I observed, that some of the most malignant and reckless spirits in
the parish were assembled. In the eyes of those who stood at the altar,
and those whom I knew to be invested with authority over the others, I
could perceive gleams of some latent and ferocious purpose, kindled,
as I soon observed, into a fiercer expression of vengeance, by the
additional excitement of ardent spirits, with which they had stimulated
themselves to a point of determination that mocked at the apprehension
of all future responsibility, either in this world or the next.
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