Paul's stupor was now beginning to leave him; his recollection was returning; and what had passed came back slowly and at intervals. There was something he had said to Esther before leaving home--he could not tell what; then his gazing after her as she drove from the house; then something of Abel,--and he sprang from the ground as if he felt the boy's touch again about his knees; then the ball-room, and a multitude of voices, and all talking of his wife. Suddenly she appeared darting by him; and Frank was there. Then came his agony and tortures again; all returned upon him as in the confusion of some horrible trance. Then the hut seemed to enlarge and the walls to rock; and shadows of those he knew, and of terrible beings he had never seen before, were flitting round him and mocking at him. His own substantial form seemed to him undergoing a change, and taking the shape and substance of the accursed ones at which he looked. As he felt the change going on he tried to utter a cry, but he could not make a sound nor move a limb. The ground under him rocked and pitched; it grew darker and darker, till everything was visionary; and he thought himself surrounded by spirits, and in the mansions of the damned. Something like a deep black cloud began to gather gradually round him. The gigantic structure, with its tall terrific arches, turned slowly into darkness, and the spirits within disappeared one after another, till as the ends of the cloud met and closed, he saw the last of them looking at him with an infernal laugh in his undefined visage. Abel continued watching him in speechless agony. Paul's consciousness was now leaving him; his head began to swim--he reeled; and as his hand swept down the side of the hut, while trying to save himself, it struck against a rusty knife that had been left sticking loosely between the logs. "Let go, let go!" shrieked Abel; "there's blood on 't--'tis cursed, 'tis cursed." As Paul swung round with the knife in his hand, Abel sprang from the door with a shrill cry, and Paul sank on the floor, muttering to himself, "What said They?"