tremendous cold, and should probably awaken, at the blast of the horn,
a fit subject for a hospital. The night proved a feverish one.
During the greater part of it, I was in that vilest of states when a
fixed idea remains in the mind, like the nail in Sisera's brain,
while innumerable other ideas go and come, and flutter to and fro,
combining constant transition with intolerable sameness. Had I made
a record of that night's half-waking dreams, it is my belief that it
would have anticipated several of the chief incidents of this
narrative, including a dim shadow of its catastrophe. Starting up in
bed at length, I saw that the storm was past, and the moon was
shining on the snowy landscape, which looked like a lifeless copy of
the world in marble.

From the bank of the distant river, which was shimmering in the
moonlight, came the black shadow of the only cloud in heaven, driven
swiftly by the wind, and passing over meadow and hillock, vanishing
amid tufts of leafless trees, but reappearing on the hither side,
until it swept across our doorstep.

How cold an Arcadia was this!



VI. COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER

The horn sounded at daybreak, as Silas Foster had forewarned us,
harsh, uproarious, inexorably drawn out, and as sleep-dispelling as
if this hard-hearted old yeoman had got hold of the trump of doom.

On all sides I could hear the creaking of the bedsteads, as the