“And how long may we count on keeping you here, then? It will be long, I fear, before we shall meet again.” “The ship cannot be fit for sea within three weeks, Theresa, or it may be a month; and I shall stay here, be sure, until the last moment. But as all mortal matters are uncertain to a proverb, and as none of us can say when, or if ever, we shall meet again, and as I have much to say to you before I go to sea this time, will you not walk in the garden with me for an hour before breakfast to-morrow?” “Surely I will. How can you doubt it, Durzil?” “I do not doubt it. And then I can give you my opinion about the young nightingales, which we forgot, after all, this morning. I dare say they will turn out to be hedge sparrows.” “I will be there soon after the sun is up, Durzil, and that I may be so, good-night, all,” and with the word, kissing her father’s brow, and giving her hand affectionately to Durzil, she courtesied to the old cavalier, and left the room without so much as looking toward Jasper, who was, however, already fast asleep, and unconscious of all sublunary matters. Her rising, though she had not joined in the conversation for the last hour or more, broke up the company, and in a few minutes they had all withdrawn, each to his own apartment; and Jasper was left alone, with the brands dying out one by one on the hearth-stone, and an old tabby cat dozing near the andirons; this night he had no other watchers, and none were there to hear or see what befell him during the hours of darkness. But had there been any one present in that old apartment, he would have seen that the sleep of the young man was strangely restless and perturbed, that the sweat-drops stood in large cold beads upon his brow, that his features were from time to time fearfully distorted, as if by pain and horror, and that he tossed his arms to and fro, as if he were wrestling with some powerful but intangible oppressor. From time to time, moreover, he uttered groans and strangely murmured sounds, and a few articulate words; but these so unconnected, and at so long intervals asunder, that no human skill could have combined them into any thing like intelligible sentences. At length with a wild, shrill cry, he started up erect in his bed, his hair bristling with terror, and the cold sweat flowing off his face like rain-drops. “Oh, God!” he cried, “avert—defend! Horror! horror!” Then raising his hands slowly to his brow, he felt himself, grasped his arm, and sought for the pulsations of his heart, as if he were laboring to satisfy himself that he was awake. At length, he murmured, “It was a dream! The Lord be praised! it was but a dream! and yet, how terrible, how vivid. Even now, I can scarce believe that I was not awake and saw it.”