There was over me a sense of weakness so oppressive and so overwhelming that though I saw the objects I have here mentioned, and gazed on them for hours long, yet I made no effort to speak, nor ask where I was, nor to whom I was indebted for shelter and succor. This apathy--for it was, indeed, such--held me entranced, even when the old man would approach the bed to feel my pulse, to bathe my temples with water, or wet my lips with a drink. After these visits he would take his staff from the corner, and leave the room, to which he frequently did not return for many hours. Thus went day after day, monotony over everything, till my head ached with very weariness, as the lazy hours went by. Where was I? Was this a state of suffering malady? Or was it imprisonment? Why was I thus? How long should I still continue so? Such were the puzzling questions which would present themselves before me,--never to be solved--never replied to. In my dreamy debility, when my faculties tottered like wearied limbs, I often wondered if I might not have entered upon some new kind of existence, in which long years of such wakeful sorrow should be gone through; and in a mood like this was it that I lay one day all alone, when from the open window there came the thrilling notes of a blackbird which sat ou a tree close by. Not even the kindest words of a fellow-creature could have filled my heart with more ecstasy than those sounds reminding me of my once happy life, my home, the little garden of the château, and its tangled alleys of fruit-trees and flowering shrubs. I struggled to arise from my bed, and after some efforts I succeeded, and with weak step and trembling limbs I reached the window and looked out. Sudden as the change from blackest night to the light of breaking day was the effect that came over me as I gazed down the valley, and recognized each well-known crag, and cliff, and mountain peak of the Verlohrnes Loch. At once now came back all memory of my adventure and the night of the storm; and at once I saw that I was standing at the window of that old ruin which had been the goal of my wandering.