he winter. The windows
are composed of double glasses, and between the sashes the space is
filled with sand to keep out the air, so that to be hermetically
sealed up is one of necessities of existence in this rigorous climate.
While I was pondering over the marvelous fact that people can live by
breathing so many thousand gallons of air over and over so many
thousand times, a whole legion of fleas, chinches, and other animals
of a still more forbidding aspect commenced their horrid work, and
would probably soon have made an end of me but for a new turn in this
most extraordinary affair. The door gently opened. A figure glided in
on tiptoe. It was that of a female, I knew by the grace and elegance
of her motions, even before I could see her face or trace the
undulating outline of her form in the dim light that pervaded the
room. My senses were acutely alive to every movement, yet I was
utterly unable to move, owing to the infernal drug with which they had
dosed me. The woman, or rather girl--for she could not have been over
eighteen or nineteen--cautiously approached the bed, with her finger
to her lips, as if warning me not to speak. She was very beautiful--I
was not insensible to that fact. Her features were wonderfully
aristocratic for one in her position, and there was something in the
expression of her dark, gleaming eyes peculiarly earnest and pathetic.
Her hair was tossed wildly and carelessly back over her shoulders--she
had evidently just risen from bed, for her costume consisted of
nothing more than a loose night-wrapper, which fell in graceful folds
around her limbs, revealing to great advantage the exquisite symmetry
of her form. I was certain she did not belong to the house.
Approaching timidly, yet with a certain air of determination, she bent
down and gazed a moment in my face, and then hurriedly whispered in
French, "Now is the time--let us escape! They lie sleeping by the
door. A servant whom I bribed has disclosed the fact of your capture
to me; I also am a prisoner in this horrid den. Will you save me? Oh,
will you fly with me?" Of course, being unable to move a muscle,
except those of my eyes, I could not open my mouth to utter a word in
reply. The unhappy young woman looked profoundly distressed that I
should thus gaze at her in silence. "Oh, what am I to do? Who will
save me?" she cried, wringing her hands in the deepest anguish: "I
have not a friend upon earth!" Then, clasping me by the hand, she
l