A cloud of thick smoke rolled over the reeds, and cries of distress
and anguish arose yet more loudly.
"Death to the incendiary! let him who burnt the monks of St.
Wilfred die by fire himself as is meet!"
The latter cry arose from the borders of the Swamp, hidden from
sight by thick eddying billows of smoke.
A flashing sheet of flame, then another--clouds of thick smoke
rolling above--the crackling of flame, devouring the dry
herbage--stifling heat, yet more unendurable each moment--suffocation
impending as the air became thicker and denser.
Held by the quicksand, and sinking deeper and deeper--only raised
above the ground from the middle of the body; so Hugo awaited his
just fate--and felt it just.
"Oh for an hour to repent! oh for a priest! My sins have found me
out."
A sudden gust of wind opened a passage through the smoke, and
revealed in the lurid light of the flames--Wilfred of Aescendune!
For a moment the baron thought himself dead, and at the judgment
seat; then as he saw his supposed victim standing in safety, afar
off on the high rock, and pointing out the scene, with awe yet
exultation on his youthful face, he grasped, as in a moment, the
whole secret of the forces which had been arrayed against him, and
tasted an agony bitterer than that of death.
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