whether Laura would mourn for me, whether she really loved me. In fact, the most serious and ridiculous thoughts were jumbled altogether, while I muttered, once or twice, a hasty prayer; and yet I did not lose a moment in remounting. This time my horse made no resistance, but stood over his hocks in a pool of salt water, and trembled and snorted--not fiercely, but in fear. There was no time to lose. I looked round for the dark line of the shore; it had sunk in the twilight. I looked again for the white tower; it had disappeared. The fall and the rolling, and turning of the horse in rising, had confused all my notions of the points of the compass. I could not tell whether it was the dark clouds from the sea, or the dizzy whirling of my brain; but it seemed to have become black night in a moment. The water seemed to flow in all directions round and round. I tried, but could not tell which was the sea, and which the river side. The wind, too, seemed to shift and blow from all points of the compass. Then, "Softly," I said to myself, "be calm; you are confused by terror; be a man;" and pride came to my rescue. I closed my eyes for a moment, and whispered, "Oh Lord, save me." Then with an effort, calmer, as though I had gulped down something, I opened my eyes, stood up in my stirrups, and peered into the darkness. As far as I could see, were patches of water eating up the dry bits of sand; as far as I could hear, a rushing tide was on all sides. Four times, in different directions, I pushed on, and stopped when I found the water rising over the shoulders of my horse. I drew up on a sort of island of sand, which was every minute growing less, and gathering all the strength of my lungs, shouted again and again, and then listened; but there came no answering shout. Suddenly, a sound of music came floating past me. I could distinguish the air; it was the military band playing "Home, sweet Home." I tried to gather from what quarter the sound came; but each time the wind instruments brayed out loudly, the sounds seemed to come to me from every direction at once. "Ah!" I thought, "I shall see home no more." I could have wept, but I had no time; my eyes were staring through the darkness, and my horse plunging and rearing, gave me no rest for weeping. I gave him his head once, having heard that horses, from ships sunk at sea, have reached land distant ten miles, by instinct; but the alternation of land, and shallow and deep water confused his senses, and destroyed the calm power which might have been developed in the mere act of swimming.