He resolves to make an attempt to
draw from its sheath the sword which separates them and so
restore them to life and liberty. Undismayed by the fate of those
who have fallen in the quest, Sir Egbert enters the castle, where
he is entertained at a gorgeous feast. When the festivities are
at their height, and Sir Egbert has momentarily forgotten his
enterprise, a terrible shriek is heard. The revellers vanish, and
Sir Egbert is left alone to face a spectral corpse, which beckons
him onward to a vault, where in flaming characters are inscribed
the words: "Death to him who violates the mysteries of Gundulph's
Tower." Nothing daunted, Sir Egbert amid execrations of fiends,
encounters delusive horrors and at last unsheathes the sword. The
lovers awake, and the whole apparatus of enchantment vanishes.
Conrad tells how he and Bertha, six years before, had been lured
by a wandering fire to a luxurious cavern, where they drank a
magic potion. The story closes with the marriage of Conrad and
Bertha, and of Egbert and Matilda, a sister of one of the other
victims of the same enchanter.
In Dr. Drake's stories are patiently collected all the heirlooms
necessary for the full equipment of a Gothic castle. Massive
doors, which sway ponderously on their hinges or are forcibly
burst open and which invariably close with a resounding crash,
dark, eerie galleries, broken staircases, decayed apartments,
mouldering floors, tolling bells, skeletons, corpses, howling
spectres--all are there; but the possessor, overwhelmed by the
very profusion which surrounds him, is at a loss how to make use
of them.
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