there was a flight of lofty terraces, at the top of which I could see a
man with his head buried forward towards a key-board, and his body
swaying from side to side amid the storm of huge arpeggioed harmonies
that came crashing overhead and round. Then there was one who touched me
on the shoulder, and said, "Do you not see? it is Handel";--but I had
hardly apprehended, and was trying to scale the terraces, and get near
him, when I awoke, dazzled with the vividness and distinctness of the
dream.

A piece of wood had burned through, and the ends had fallen into the
ashes with a blaze: this, I supposed, had both given me my dream and
robbed me of it. I was bitterly disappointed, and sitting up on my
elbow, came back to reality and my strange surroundings as best I could.

I was thoroughly aroused--moreover, I felt a foreshadowing as though my
attention were arrested by something more than the dream, although no
sense in particular was as yet appealed to. I held my breath and waited,
and then I heard--was it fancy? Nay; I listened again and again, and I
_did_ hear a faint and extremely distant sound of music, like that of an
AEolian harp, borne upon the wind which was blowing fresh and chill from
the opposite mountains.

The roots of my hair thrilled. I listened, but the wind had died; and,
fancying that it must have been the wind itself--no; on a sudden I
remembered the noise which Chowbok had made in the wool-shed. Yes; it
was that.

Thank Heaven, whatever it was, it was over now. I reasoned with myself,
and recovered my firmness. I became convinced that I had only been
dreaming more vividly than usual. Soon I began even to laugh, and think