drew aside
the window curtains, and looked out. The only prospect that met my view
was the black gulf of darkness in which the lake lay hidden. I could
see nothing; I could do nothing; I could think of nothing. The one
alternative before me was that of trying to sleep. My medical knowledge
told me plainly that natural sleep was, in my nervous condition, one
of the unattainable luxuries of life for that night. The medicine-chest
which Mr. Dunross had placed at my disposal remained in the room. I
mixed for myself a strong sleeping draught, and sullenly took refuge
from my troubles in bed.

It is a peculiarity of most of the soporific drugs that they not only
act in a totally different manner on different constitutions, but that
they are not even to be depended on to act always in the same manner on
the same person. I had taken care to extinguish the candles before I got
into my bed. Under ordinary circumstances, after I had lain quietly in
the darkness for half an hour, the draught that I had taken would
have sent me to sleep. In the present state of my nerves the draught
stupefied me, and did no more.

Hour after hour I lay perfectly still, with my eyes closed, in the
semi-sleeping, semi-wakeful state which is so curiously characteristic
of the ordinary repose of a dog. As the night wore on, such a sense of
heaviness oppressed my eyelids that it was literally impossible for me
to open them--such a masterful languor possessed all my muscles that I
could no more move on my pillow than if I had been a corpse. And yet,
in this somnolent condition, my mind was able to pursue lazy trains of
pleasant thought. My sense of hearing was so acute that it caught the
faintest sounds made by the passage of the night-breeze through the
rushes of the lake. Inside my bed-chamber, I was even more keenly
sensible of those weird night-noises in the heavy furniture of a room,
of those sudden settlements of extinct coals in the grate, so familiar
to bad sleepers, so startling to overwrought nerves! It is not a
scientifically correct statement, but it exactly describes my condition,
that night, to say that one half of me was asleep and the other half
awake.

How many hours of the night had passed, when my irritable sense of
hearing became aware of a new sound in the room, I cannot tell. I can
only relate that I found myself on a sudden listening intently, with
fast-closed eyes. The sound that disturbed me was the faintest sound
imaginable,