Though my sleep was dead, heavy, and dreamless, it lasted not long. I awoke with a sudden start and a sense of terrible apprehension. I am certain, indeed, that even when no visions perpetuate vaguely, during slumber, the thoughts which have occupied us waking, the sensations of the heart--if I may make such a distinction between heart and mind--persist, while all the ordinary faculties are steeped in oblivion, and knock at the doors of the brain till they awake us. I struck my repeater, and found it a quarter past three; and although I knew that in this latitude an hour or two of darkness had to intervene before the first dawn of day, I could find no more refuge in sleep. I lay there, and revolved the circumstances in which I was placed, and, as I imagined, all the probabilities--nay, even the possibilities--of the case. But I made no progress towards any conclusion. The prospect was as dark and dreary as ever! perhaps more so. At least it seemed so to me; for I know no more unpleasant hour to wake at, with feelings of apprehension on the mind, than three o'clock in the morning. It seems as if all the grizzly phantoms of imagination and dread gather thickly round our bed; and the dark sensation of that gloomy Nemesis, which hangs for ever brooding over human happiness, is felt more powerfully than at any other time. I struggled hard against it. I tried to put my trust in God. But there are moments when Faith and Hope seem darkened; when God's inspiring grace seems withdrawn; when the power of the prince of the air seems mighty over us in the darkness, and every image that can shake our trust is presented with appalling force. "How many," I thought, "had the very night before risen from their knees to lay themselves down to rest with hope and faith in Him in whom I now strove to put my trust, and had never risen but to receive the death-blow of the murderer, or to weep over the ruin of every edifice of love. Oh, man! man! here lies our fault. Our hopes, our wishes, our faith, our trust, go not beyond this world. The dark chasm of the grave stops human thought and human feeling in their course, and we neither fully trust nor believe beyond." Such, at least, was the case with myself at that time. And the next hour and a half that passed, till the grey glimmer of the dawn began to appear, were amongst the most melancholy I ever endured in my life. Oh, Bessy! if you could have seen my heart then, you would have known more than words could ever convey.