“Ere thou departest, brother, have the goodness to ring the bell, and desire the menials to remove this carrion from my apartment.”

The young Baron sulkily complied, and retreated growling to his chamber.

The attendants carried Otto’s body forth.  To the honour of her sex be it recorded, that before this was done Aurelia vouchsafed one glance to the corpse of her old lover.  Her eye fell on the brazen ring.  “And he has actually worn it all this time!” thought she.

“Would have outraged my daughter, would he?” said the old Baron, when the transaction was reported to him.  “Let him be buried in a concatenation accordingly.”

“What the guy dickens be a concatrenation, Geoffrey?” interrogated Giles.

“Methinks it is Latin for a ditch,” responded Geoffrey.

This interpretation commending itself to the general judgment of the retainers, Otto was interred in the shelving bank of the old moat, just under Aurelia’s window.  A rough stone was laid upon the grave.  The magic ring, which no one thought worth appropriating, remained upon the corpse’s finger.  Thou mayest probably find it there, reader, if thou searchest long enough.

The first visitor to Otto’s humble sepulchre was, after all, Aurelia herself, who alighted thereon on the following night after letting herself down from her casement to fly with Arnold.  Their escape was successfully achieved upon a pair of excellent horses, the proceeds of Otto’s diamond, which had become the property of a Jew.

On the third night an aged monk stood by Otto’s grave, and wept plentifully.  He carried a lantern, a mallet, and a chisel.  “He was my pupil,” sobbed the good old man.  “It were meet to contribute what in me lies to the befitting perpetuation of his memory.”

Setting down the lantern, he commenced work, and with pious toil engraved on the stone in the Latin of the period: 

    “HAC MAGNUS STULTUS JACET IN FOSSA SEPULTUS. 
    MULIER CUI CREDIDIT MORTUUM ILLUM REDDIDIT.”

Here he paused, at the end of his strength and of his Latin.

“Beshrew my old arms and brains!” he sighed.

“Hem!” coughed a deep voice in his vicinity.

The monk looked up.  The personage in the dusky cloak and flame-coloured jerkin was standing over him.

“Good monk,” said the fiend, “what dost thou here?”

“Good fiend,” said the monk, “I am inscribing an epitaph to the memory of a departed friend.  Thou mightest kindly aid me to complete it.”

“Truly,” rejoined the demon, “it would become me to do so, seeing that I have his soul here in my pocket.  Thou wilt not expect me to employ the language of the Church.  Nathless, I see not wherefore the vernacular may not serve as well.”

And, taking the mallet and chisel, he completed the monk’s inscription with the supplementary legend: 

    “SERVED HIM RIGHT.”

THE BELL OF SAINT EUSCHEMON