How many a night at that still hour had Adam lain in his terror, listening to this moaning wind with supernaturally quick ear, lest it should be only covering other sounds--the approach of his deadly enemies! How many times in a night had he quitted his bed, his heart beating, and stolen a cautious peep beside the blind to see whether they might not be there, in battle array, waiting until the dawn should come and they might get in to take him! Ah, it was all at an end now; the fever, and the fear, and the wasting restlessness. Why! if the men were drawn up round his bed, they would not care to touch him. But the terror from force of habit stayed with him to the last. He started up. How long he had slept, and how the night was going, Karl in his abstraction hardly knew. Adam's eyes looked somewhat wild in the shade of the night-light, and he put up his feeble hand. "What is it?" asked Karl gently. "I thought they were here, Karl; I saw them in the room,"--he whispered--and his eyes went round it. "They had muskets I think. Was it a dream?" "Nothing but a dream, Adam. I am with you. Rose is asleep in the arm-chair." "Ay. I have not dreamt of them for a week past. Stay by me, Karlo." Karl would have risen to administer some cordial: but Adam was holding his hand in a tight grasp; had shut his eyes, and seemed to be dropping asleep again. He slept about half-an-hour, and Karl's imprisoned arm went from a state of pins and needles into the cramp. When Adam awoke, there was a smile on his face and a peaceful rest in his eyes. He was quite collected. "Karl, I dreamt of them again: but they had turned to angels. They were here, all about my bed. Oh Karl, I wish you could see them as I saw them! you'd never be afraid of anything more in this world. What's that?" Karl turned round: for Adam's eyes were fixed on something or other behind him. He could see nothing save a streak of light, herald of the dawn, that came in at the side of the blind. "Do you mean the light, Adam? It's the dawn breaking." "Ay. _My_ dawn. Draw up the blind. Karl." Softly, not to awake Rose, Karl drew it up. Rose-coloured clouds, heralds of a beauteous sunrise, flooded the East. Adam lay and gazed at it, the smile on his face changing to a rapt look that seemed to speak of heaven, more than of earth. "It will be better there than here, Karl. For me." "Better for all of us." "I am very happy, Karl. The world is fading from me: heaven opening. Forgive me all that I have cost you." Karl's heart and eyes were alike full. "Just as the men who had troubled me were changed into angels, so my fear has changed to rest. The angels are about the bed still, Karl; I know they are; waiting for me. The same lovely light shone on them that is shining yonder; and they told me without words that they were come to bear me up to God. I read it in their tender faces--so full of pitying love for me. It won't be so very long, Karl: you'll come later."