She started up, and taking the small metal whistle hanging at her side, blew a shrill note that seemed to pierce my brain like a steel weapon. I tried to get up from my seat on the trunk, but only slipped down to the ground. A dull mist and gloom seemed to be settling down on everything; daylight, and hope with it, was fast forsaking the world. But something was coming to us--out of that universal mist and darkness closing around us it came bounding swiftly through the wood--a huge gray wolf! No, not a wolf--a wolf was nothing to it! A mighty, roaring lion crashing through the forest; a monster ever increasing in size, vast and of horrible aspect, surpassing all monsters of the imagination--all beasts, gigantic and deformed, that had ever existed in past geologic ages; a lion with teeth like elephants' tusks, its head clothed as with a black thunder-cloud, through which its eyes glared like twin, blood-red suns! And she--my love--with a cry on her lips, was springing forth to meet it--lost, lost for ever! I struggled frantically to rise and fly to her assistance, and rose, after many efforts, to my knees, only to fall again to the earth, insensible. Chapter 16 The violent fever into which I had fallen did not abate until the third day, when I fell into a profound slumber, from which I woke refreshed and saved. I did not, on awakening, find myself in my own familiar cell, but in a spacious apartment new to me, on a comfortable bed, beside which Edra was seated. Almost my first feeling was one of disappointment at not seeing Yoletta there, and presently I began to fear that in the ravings of delirium I had spoken things which had plucked the scales from the eyes of my kind friends in a very rough way indeed, and that the being I loved best had been permanently withdrawn from my sight. It was a blessed relief when Edra, in answer to the questions I put with some heart-quakings to her, informed me that I had talked a great deal in my fever, but unintelligibly, continually asking questions about Venus, Diana, Juno, and many other persons whose names had never before been heard in the house. How fortunate that my crazy brain had thus continued vexing itself with this idle question! She also told me that Yoletta had watched day and night at my side, that at last, when the fever left me, and I had fallen into that cooling slumber, she too, with her hand on mine, had dropped her head on the pillow and fallen asleep. Then, without waking her, they had carried her away to her own room, and Edra had taken her place by my side. "Have you nothing more to ask?" she said at length, with an accent of surprise. "No; nothing more. What you have told me has made me very happy--what more can I wish to know?" "But there is more to tell you, Smith. We know now that your illness is the result of your own imprudence; and as soon as you are well enough to leave your room and bear it, you must suffer the punishment."