sort of indistinct gurgling noise,
and poured forth his breath with his bubbling blood. Panthea then
stopped the gaping wound with a sponge, exclaiming, "Beware, O sea-born
sponge, how thou dost pass through a river!"

When she had said this, they lifted my bed from the ground, and dashed
over me a mass of filth.

Hardly had they passed over the threshold when the door resumed its
former state. The hinges settled back on the panels, the posts returned
to the bars, and the bolts flew back to their sockets again. I lay
prostrate on the ground in a squalid plight, terrified, naked, cold, and
drenched. Indeed, I was half dead, though still alive; and pursued a
train of reflections like one already in the grave, or to say the least
on the way to the cross, to which I was surely destined. "What," said I,
"will become of me, when this man is found in the morning with his
throat cut? If I tell the truth, who will believe a word of the story?
'You ought at least,' they will say, 'to have called for help, if as
strong a man as you are could not withstand a woman! Is a man's throat
to be cut before your eyes, and you keep silence? Why was it that you
were not assassinated too? How did the villains come to spare you, a
witness of the murder? They would naturally kill you, if only to put an
end to all evidence of the crime. Since your escape from death was
against reason, return to it.'"

I said these things to myself over and over again, while the night was
fast verging toward day. It seemed best to me, therefore, to escape on
the sly before daylight and pursue my journey, though I was all in a
tremble. I took up my bundle, put the key in the door, and drew back the
bolts. But this good and faithful door, which had opened of its own
accord in the night, would not open now till I had tried the key again
and again.

"Hallo, porter!" said I, "where are you? Open the gate, I want to be off
before daybreak."

The porter, who was lying on the ground behind the door, only grunted,
"Why do you want to begin a journey at this time of night? Don't you
know the roads are infested by robbers? You may have a mind to meet your
death,--perhaps your conscience stings you for some crime you have
committed; but I haven't a head like a pumpkin, that I should die for
your sake!"

"It isn't very far from daybreak," said I; "and besides, what can
robbers take from a traveler in utter poverty? Don't _you_ know, you
fool, that a naked man can't b