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ST. IRVYNE;
OR,
THE ROSICRUCIAN.
CHAPTER I.
Red thunder-clouds, borne on the wings of the
midnight whirlwind, floated, at fits, athwart
the crimson-coloured orbit of the moon: the
rising fierceness of the blast sighed through the stunted
shrubs, which, bending before its violence, inclined
towards the rocks whereon they grew: over the blackened
expanse of heaven, at intervals, was spread the
blue lightning's flash; it played upon the granite
heights, and, with momentary brilliancy, disclosed the
terrific scenery of the Alps, whose gigantic and misshapen
summits, reddened by the transitory moonbeam,
were crossed by black fleeting fragments of the tempest-*cloud.
The rain, in big drops, began to descend, and
the thunder-peals, with louder and more deafening
crash, to shake the zenith, till the long-protracted war
echoing from cavern to cavern, died, in indistinct
murmurs, amidst the far-extended chain of mountains.
In this scene, then, at this horrible and tempestuous
hour, without one existent earthly being whom he
might claim as friend, without one resource to which
he might fly as an asylum from the horrors of neglect
and poverty, stood Wolfstein;—he gazed upon the con-
