And Johannes, submissive with wretchedness, obeyed, scratching away the fine damp soil. Silent and breathless they worked away till they came to the black wood. The worm had drawn back his ringed head and disappeared. The ear-wig dropped the light and turned away. 'It is impossible to get in, the wood is new,' said he as he withdrew. 'I will do it!' said Pluizer, and with his clawed fingers he tore long white splinters cracking out of the wood. A fearful anguish came over Johannes. But he could not help himself; there was no escape. At last the dark thing was opened. Pluizer seized the light and hurried in. 'Here, here!' he cried, running to the head. But when Johannes came as far as the hands, which lay quietly folded over the breast, he stopped. He gazed at the thin white fingers, dimly lighted from above. On a sudden, he recognised them,--he knew the shape and turn of the fingers, the look of the long nails, now blue and dull. He recognised a brown spot on one of the forefingers. These were his own hands. 'Here, this way!' Pluizer called from the head. 'Only look, do you know him?' Hapless Johannes tried to stand up and go towards the light which winked at him; but he could not. The gleam died into total darkness and he fell senseless. XII He had sunk into deep sleep--that sleep which is too deep for dreams. When he came out of the darkness--very slowly--into the cool grey light of dawn, he passed through varied and peaceful dreams of an early time. He woke up, and they glided off his soul, like dew-drops off a flower. The look in his eyes was calm and sweet as they still gazed on the crowd of lovely images. But he closed them again quickly as though the glare were painful, to shut out the pale daylight. He saw just what he had seen the morning before. It seemed to him far away and a long time ago. Still, hour by hour, he remembered it all, from the dreary day-break to the terrible night. He could not believe that all these horrors had come upon him in a single day. The beginning of his wretchedness seemed so remote, lost in grey mist. The sweet dreams vanished, and left no trace on his spirit; Pluizer shook him, and the dreadful day began, gloomy and colourless; the first of many, many more. But all he had seen last night in that terrible walk dwelt in his mind. Had it been no more than a fearful vision? When he asked Pluizer doubtfully, he looked at him with mockery and amazement. 'What do you mean?' he said. But Johannes did not see the sarcasm in his eyes, and asked whether all this, which he still saw so plainly and clearly, had not indeed been true. 'Why, Johannes, how silly you are! Such a thing could never happen at all.' And Johannes did not know what to think. 'We must set you to work at once, and then you will ask no more such foolish questions.' So they went to Doctor Cypher, who was to help Johannes to find what he sought.