She might as well have addressed her entreaties to a stone. Neither by gesture, nor by word of mouth, nor by variation of feature, did the rabbi signify that he had even heard her voice, or was even aware of her existence. The carriage drove away, leaving Christine in a paroxysm of frantic grief. “Well,” remarked old Redwood to Dr. Whipple, “I've heard tell of bowels of mercy; but actually, that old Hebrew there, he must have bowels of brass.” XIII. SLOWLY recovering his senses, the first thing that Elias became conscious of, was a racking headache. By and by he opened his eyes, and glanced around. Vaguely, as if half waking, half dreaming, he saw that he was lying fully dressed upon his own bed in his own bed-chamber. The gas was turned down low. By fits and starts a puff of fresh, cool air blew through the open window, making the curtain flap noisily, and the gas-flame flicker. Nobody else was in the room. Pretty soon he closed his eyes again, and again for a while was aware only of that desperate pain in the head. But by degrees a certain sluggish perplexity began to assert itself, a certain dull surprise and curiosity. “There is something strange--something I don't understand. How do I come to be here? Have I been asleep and dreaming? Or is it true that a little while ago I was somewhere else? Where? I was doing something--something important--something that somebody else was doing with me. What? And then something happened. And--and now, here I am, lying here as though I had just waked out of a sleep, but all dressed, and with such, with _such_ a headache---- Let me think.” He tried hard to think; but in his mind all was impenetrable darkness, through which his thought groped at random, catching no gleam to follow; until of a sudden, a swift, intense lightning-flash of memory; and in an instant of supreme horror--with a mental recoil that communicated itself to his body, and made it start convulsively--he beheld what he supposed to be the appalling truth. Upon that lightning-flash, succeeded a very thunderstorm confusion in his brain. “Oh, God!” he cried; and again and again, “Oh, God!” Just what was it that he remembered? “I remembered,” says he, in another part of that letter from which an excerpt was printed in Chapter X., “I remembered every thing down to the moment of my falling, with unaccustomed vividness and detail. I remembered our entering the parlor--you trembling upon my arm!--and running the gauntlet of the guests, and coming to a stand-still before the clergyman. I remembered the address that he had made; and how you had listened, with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks; and how I had--well, scarcely listened--but waited till he should finish, with eyes fastened upon your face, and heart beating hard for happiness.