lause, growing
interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes all the
credit), and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, "I
have it, that'll do!" upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he
sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like Claudius in
the play, he scatters the performance in the midst. Often enough the
waking is a disappointment: he has been too deep asleep, as I explain
the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone
stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the play, to the
awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. And yet how often
have these sleepless Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as
he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than he could
fashion for himself.

Here is one, exactly as it came to him. It seemed he was the son of a
very rich and wicked man, the owner of broad acres and a most damnable
temper. The dreamer (and that was the son) had lived much abroad, on
purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he returned to England,
it was to find him married again to a young wife, who was supposed to
suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. Because of this marriage (as the
dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable for father and son to
have a meeting; and yet both being proud and both angry, neither would
condescend upon a visit. Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy
country by the sea; and there they quarrelled, and the son, stung by
some intolerable insult, struck down the father dead. No suspicion was
aroused; the dead man was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded to
the broad estates, and found himself installed under the same roof with
his father's widow, for whom no provision had been made. These two lived
very much alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat down to table
together, shared the long evenings, and grew daily better friends; until
it seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying about dangerous
matters, that she had conceived a notion of his guilt, that she watched
him and tried him with questions. He drew back from her company as men
draw back from a precipice suddenly discovered; and yet so strong was
the attraction that he would drift again and again into the old
intimacy, and again and again be startled back by some suggestive
question or some inexplicable meaning in her eye. So they lived at cross
purposes, a life full of brok