ny and might turn
to another, the stopping fell out, and he was obliged to begin anew.
The snorting thing at the back of the cavern went on rattling out
sounds without meaning, only occasionally uttering intelligible words,
which seemed to denote that the creature was boasting of its deep
investigations.

"Time appeared to the student to be hastening along with the greatest
rapidity, while he was pursuing his work of despair. Days, weeks,
months, years, seemed to come and go, and yet he felt nothing like
hunger or thirst. He fancied he was nearly mad, and with a kind of
feigned passion, quietly repeated to himself the year in which he had
entered the wood, and that it was on the day of Peter and Paul, that he
might not lose all notion of time. The image of his beloved sleeper
appeared to him as from a far distance, he wept with desire and sorrow,
and yet he felt no tears flowing down his cheeks. All at once it
seemed to him as if he saw a well-known figure approach the sleeper,
contemplate her with rapture, and then bend over her as if to kiss her.
At this moment he was entirely conscious of pain and jealousy, and,
forgetting all around him, he darted towards the dark background of the
cavern. 'The yew-branch!' he cried, eagerly. 'There it grows,' said
the glaring snorting thing, and at the same time he felt in his hand
the branch of a tree, which grew from a dark chink in the grotto. He
was in the act of breaking one of the branches, when he heard a
whimpering noise around him, the glaring creature snorted louder than
ever, the cavern reeled, shook, and fell in, all became dark in the
eyes of the student, and he involuntarily shouted out:

'Before the yew tree,
All magic must flee.'

"When his eyes again became clear, he looked around him. A dry,
strangely-discoloured stick was in his hand. He stood amid a heap of
stones, which arched themselves to a cavern, which was not very large.
In the depth of it he heard shrill, piping sounds, like those commonly
uttered by great owls. The place around seemed changed. It was a
moderate eminence, bare, and scanty, and sprinkled over with stones of
no remarkable magnitude, between which the path by which he had
ascended, led on one side, through the damp soil, to the abyss. Of the
large blocks of rock, nothing more was to be seen. He was freezing
with cold, although the sun was high in the heavens, and, as it seemed
to him, in the same place as when he went