The vicinity of the patrol had startled me, in fact, and I had determined to pass this night in the woods. It was a bad night. Warm as it had been in the day, it grew cold at nightfall, and the cold steadily increased as the night advanced. In vain did I bury myself a foot deep in the dry leaves, or try by brisk walking backwards and forwards to gain a little warmth. The dense mist that arose from the earth soaked my clothes through, and chilled me to the marrow. The long hours of the autumn night crept on with dreadful slowness; it seemed as if it would never be day. And in addition to these physical and almost intolerable sufferings of cold, hunger, and fatigue, the recollection of what I had recently gone through presented itself to me in ever more frightful pictures the longer the night lasted, and the more hotly the fever burned in my veins. While, half dead with fatigue, I staggered backwards and forwards in a clear space between the trees, I saw myself again on the moor at Herr von Zehren's side, with Jock Swart lying dead at our feet, while the flames of the burning castle wrapped us in an awful glare, so fearfully bright that it seemed the whole forest was burning around me, while yet my limbs shivered and my teeth chattered with cold. Then Herr von Zehren sat before me as I had last seen him sitting, with the rising sun shining in his glazed eyes; and then again it was not Herr von Zehren, but my father, or Professor Lederer, or some other, but all dead, with glassy eyes open to the sun. Then again I became conscious of my real situation, that it was dark night around me, that I was excessively cold, that I had sharp fever, and that despite the risk of discovery I must resolve to kindle a real fire instead of the frightful visionary one which I still saw in my feverish hallucination.