I heard no more, and my senses were again lost. I know not how long I remained in that state, from which I only painfully and with difficulty awoke. I was alone, and all was utter darkness; but, after some interval, faint gleams of daylight broke into the low deep vault, scarcely six feet square, into which I now, with the utmost horror, perceived that I had been removed from my former prison. I was tormented with extreme thirst, and grappled at the water-jug which stood near me. Cold and moist, it slipped out of my numbed hands before I had gained from it even one imperfect draught, and, with abhorrence, I saw a large overgrown toad crawl out of it as it lay on the floor. "Aurelia!" I groaned, in that feeling of nameless misery into which I was now sunk--"Aurelia!--and was it for this that I have been guilty of hypocrisy and abominable falsehood in the court of justice--for this only, that I might protract, by a few hours, a life of torment and misery? What would'st thou," said I to myself, "delirious wretch, as thou art? Thou strivest after the possession of Aurelia, who could be thine only through an abominable and blasphemous crime; and however thou might'st disguise thyself from the world, she would infallibly recognize in thee the accursed murderer of Hermogen, and look on thee with detestation. Miserable deluded fool, where are now all thy high-flown projects, thy belief and confidence in thine own supernatural power, by which thou could'st guide thy destiny even as thou wilt? Thou art wholly unable and powerless to kill the worm of conscience, which gnaws on the heart's marrow, and thou wilt shamefully perish in hopeless grief, even if the arm of temporal justice should spare thee!" Thus I complained aloud, but at the moment when I uttered these words, I felt a painful pressure on my breast, which seemed to proceed from some hard substance in my waistcoat pocket. I grappled with it accordingly, and drew out, to my surprise, a small stiletto. Never had I worn any such implement since I had been in the prison. It must, of necessity, be the same which had been held up to me by my mysterious _double_. I recognized the glittering heft. It was the identical stiletto with which I had killed Hermogen, and which, for many weeks, I had been without!