t, who proposed sending for a physician; but this I
would not allow, knowing that woe like mine was beyond the reach of
medicine. The greater part of that day was spent in religious exercises,
from which I felt considerable relief. The day after was the last I was
to behold upon earth. It came, and I endeavoured by every means to
subdue the terror which it brought along with it. On arising from bed, I
sent for my servant, an elderly woman whom I had got to supply the place
of Barnabas and Louise, and gave her one hundred gilders, being all the
money I could find in Wolstang's bureau. "Now, Philippa," said I, "as
soon as the clock of the study has struck three, come in, and you will
find me dead. Retire, and do not enter till then." She went away,
promising to do all that I had ordered her.

During the interval I sat opposite the clock, marking the hours pass
rapidly by. Every tick was as a death-knell to my ear--every movement of
the hands, as the motion of a scimitar levelled to cut me in pieces. I
heard all, and I saw all in horrid silence. Two o'clock at length
struck. "Now," said I, "there is but one hour for me on earth--then the
dreadful struggle begins--then I must live again in the tomb only to
perish miserably." Half an hour passed, then forty minutes, then fifty,
then fifty-five. I saw with utter despair the minute-hand go by the
latter, and approach the meridian number of the dial. As it swept on, a
stupor fell over my spirit, a mist swam before my eyes, and I almost
lost the power of consciousness. At last I heard _one_ strike aloud--my
flesh creeped with dread; then _two_--I gave an universal shudder; then
_three_, and I gasped convulsively, and saw and heard nothing further.

CHAPTER V.

At this moment I was sensible of an insufferable coldness. My heart
fluttered, then it beat strong, and the blood, passing as it were over
my chilled frame, gave it warmth and animation. I also began by slow
degrees to breathe. But though my bodily feelings were thus torpid, my
mental ones were very different. They were on the rack; for I knew that
I was now buried alive, and that the dreadful struggle was about to
commence. Instead of rejoicing as I recovered the genial glow of life, I
felt appalled with blank despair. I was terrified to move, because I
knew I would feel the horrid walls of my narrow prison-house. I was
terrified to breathe, because the pent air within it would be exhausted,
and the suffocation of str