could scarcely raise himself from the
ground. He looked round, but could see nothing of Paul. "They have bound
us together," said he; "and something is drawing me toward him. There is
no help for me; I must go whither he goes." As he was drawn nearer and
nearer to the hut he seemed to struggle and hang back, as if pushed on
against his will. At last he reached the doorway; and clinging to its
side with a desperate hold, as if not to be forced in, put his head
forward a little, casting a hasty glance into the building. "There he
is, and alive!" breathed out Abel.

Paul's stupor was now beginning to leave him; his recollection was
returning; and what had passed came back slowly and at intervals. There
was something he had said to Esther before leaving home--he could not
tell what; then his gazing after her as she drove from the house; then
something of Abel,--and he sprang from the ground as if he felt the
boy's touch again about his knees; then the ball-room, and a multitude
of voices, and all talking of his wife. Suddenly she appeared darting by
him; and Frank was there. Then came his agony and tortures again; all
returned upon him as in the confusion of some horrible trance. Then the
hut seemed to enlarge and the walls to rock; and shadows of those he
knew, and of terrible beings he had never seen before, were flitting
round him and mocking at him. His own substantial form seemed to him
undergoing a change, and taking the shape and substance of the accursed
ones at which he looked. As he felt the change going on he tried to
utter a cry, but he could not make a sound nor move a limb. The ground
under him rocked and pitched; it grew darker and darker, till everything
was visionary; and he thought himself surrounded by spirits, and in the
mansions of the damned. Something like a deep black cloud began to
gather gradually round him. The gigantic structure, with its tall
terrific arches, turned slowly into darkness, and the spirits within
disappeared one after another, till as the ends of the cloud met and
closed, he saw the last of them looking at him with an infernal laugh in
his undefined visage.

Abel continued watching him in speechless agony. Paul's consciousness
was now leaving him; his head began to swim--he reeled; and as his hand
swept down the side of the hut, while trying to save himself, it struck
against a rusty knife that had been left sticking loosely between the
logs. "Let go, let go!" shrieked Abel; "ther