ls!' for I guessed
that they had fallen upon the wrong man. Not a second was allowed. Soon
the shrewd physical bracing, acting momentarily on my brain, relaxed; the
fitful illumination ceased: all ideas faded out-clung about my beaten
body-fled. The body might have been tossed into its grave, for aught I
knew.

CHAPTER XLVI

AMONG GIPSY WOMEN

I cannot say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to
grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the
slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of
climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms
below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted
with a pair of enormous eyes, which threw surrounding objects to a
distance of a mile away, I could not induce the diminutive things to
approach; and shutting eyes led to such a rolling of mountains in my
brain, that, terrified by the gigantic revolution, I lay determinedly
staring; clothed, it seemed positive, in a tight-fitting suit of
sheet-lead; but why? I wondered why, and immediately received an
extinguishing blow. My pillow was heavenly; I was constantly being cooled
on it, and grew used to hear a croon no more musical than the unstopped
reed above my head; a sound as of a breeze about a cavern's mouth, more
soothing than a melody. Conjecture of my state, after hovering timidly in
dread of relapses, settled and assured me I was lying baked, half-buried
in an old river-bed; moss at my cheek, my body inextricable; water now
and then feebly striving to float me out, with horrid pain, with infinite
refreshingness. A shady light, like the light through leafage, I could
see; the water I felt. Why did it keep trying to move me? I questioned
and sank to the depths again.

The excruciated patient was having his wet bandages folded across his
bruises, and could not bear a motion of the mind.

The mind's total apathy was the sign of recovering health. Kind nature
put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower
functions. I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded
substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream,
clinging to this and that, twirling absurdly.

Where was I? Not in a house. But for my condition of absolute calm, owing
to skilful treatment, open air, and physical robustness, the scene would
have been of a kind to scatter the busy little workmen setting up the
fabric of m