wind blew the flame about. "He is sleeping," she said in a whisper, as if
her voice might wake him. And I replied, when I could find my voice, also
in a whisper, as though the jingling of the horses' furniture and the
sound of their hoofs must not have been more dangerous. I stood on the
steps with her a moment, almost afraid to go in, now that I was here; and
it seemed to me that I saw without observing, if I may say so, that the
horses were unwilling to turn round, though their stables lay that way,
or that the men were unwilling. These things occurred to me afterwards,
though at the moment I was not capable of anything but to ask questions
and to hear of the condition of the boy.

I looked at him from the door of his room, for we were afraid to go near,
lest we should disturb that blessed sleep. It looked like actual sleep,
not the lethargy into which my wife told me he would sometimes fall. She
told me everything in the next room, which communicated with his, rising
now and then and going to the door of communication; and in this there
was much that was very startling and confusing to the mind. It appeared
that ever since the winter began--since it was early dark, and night had
fallen before his return from school--he had been hearing voices among
the ruins: at first only a groaning, he said, at which his pony was as
much alarmed as he was, but by degrees a voice. The tears ran down my
wife's cheeks as she described to me how he would start up in the night
and cry out, "Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!" with a
pathos which rent her heart. And she sitting there all the time, only
longing to do everything his heart could desire! But though she would try
to soothe him, crying, "You are at home, my darling. I am here. Don't you
know me? Your mother is here!" he would only stare at her, and after a
while spring up again with the same cry. At other times he would be quite
reasonable, she said, asking eagerly when I was coming, but declaring
that he must go with me as soon as I did so, "to let them in." "The