He felt about, but could touch only straw; and on stretching his hands
out farther, it was with no better result.

He listened.

Not a sound.

Strained his eyes.

All was blacker than the blackest night.

What should he do? Get up? Crawl about? Shout?

He could not answer his own questions; and as he lay there wondering
what would be best, that strange feeling of confusion that oppresses the
strongest of us in the dark when we are ignorant of where we are, came
upon him, and he lay there at last with the perspiration gathering in
big drops upon his brow.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

AN UNPLEASANT AWAKENING.

Did you ever suffer from that unpleasant bodily disorder--sleep-walking?
Did you ever wake up and find yourself standing undressed in the cold--
somewhere--you can't tell where, only that you are out of bed and on the
floor? You are confused--puzzled--and you want to know what is the
matter. You know you ought to be in bed, or rather you have a vague
kind of belief that you ought to be in bed, and you want to be back
there, but the question directly arises--where is the bed? and for the
life of you you cannot tell. You hold out your hands, and they touch
nothing. You try in another direction--another, and another, with the
same result, and, at last with one hand outstretched to the full extent,
you gradually edge along sidewise till you touch something--wall,
wardrobe, door, and somehow it feels so strange that you seem never to
have touched it before; perhaps you never have, for in daylight one does
not go about one's room touching doors and walls.

Of course the result is that you find your bed at last, and that it is
close to you, for you stretched your hands right over it again and
again; but all the same it is a very singular experience, and the
accompanying confusion most peculiar, and those who have ever had such
an awakening can the better understand Hilary Leigh's feelings as he lay
there longing for the light.

"Well," he exclaimed at last, after vainly endeavouring to pierce the
darkness, and to touch something else but straw and the stones upon
which it had been heaped, "if any one had told me that I should be such
a coward on waking up and finding myself in the dark, I should have hit
him, I'm sure I should. But it is unpleasant all the same. Oh, I say,
how my legs ache!"

This took his attention from his position, and he sat up and then drew
up his legs.

"Well, I must be stupid