Having reached the south side of this street, Duncan Schulebred kept close by the walls and houses, stepping along, unwilling to trust himself again to open space. Alas! he knew nothing of whither he was progressing; he had lost all recollection of what he had been engaged in; he was unconscious of what he was doing; and he was utterly ignorant of all localities. As he moved past the houses, he came to an opening, and, staggering to a side, entered a small avenue into which it led, and proceeded along it, still holding by the wall, until he got into what he thought was a large house. There he lay down, and fell in an instant into a sleep, disturbed by those frightful dreams that haunt the pillow of the dissolute and the wicked. Having lain for hours, Duncan Schulebred began at last to show some signs of returning consciousness, rolling his body backwards and forwards, as if under the effect of a night-mare of the fancy, or of that more terrible night-mare of the conscience by which he was often at home so relentlessly ridden. And so he was. Frightful dreams had filled his mind with terrors; and, having produced a kind of half-waking state, were followed, as they usually were, by the gnawing of his old enemy. A dim recollection came on him of all the wickedness he had committed--the number of innocent individuals he had cheated by his short measure and his damaged linen; the shirking of publicans, the duping of travellers, his drunkenness, his lies, his false pretences--all his thoughts being accompanied by the terrors of his roused conscience, which whispered punishment by fire and brimstone, and filled his half-sleeping fancy with vivid images of the place of punishment. It is not unlikely that this half-waking, dreamy cogitation, was aided insensibly by the painful operation of external sense, conveying some dim intelligence of what was going on around him--the operations of glass-blowing on a great scale.