those which strewed the floor of his cave:
but the sunbeam was rapidly climbing the wall, and would presently be
gone, so he let the shells lie till the next night (if he should still
be here), and made haste to heap up a bed of fine dry sand in a corner;
and here he lay down as the twilight darkened, and thought he had never
rested on so soft a bed. He knew it was near high-water, and he tried
to keep awake, to ascertain how nearly the tide filled up the entrance;
but he was too weary, and his couch was too comfortable for this. His
eyes closed in spite of him, and he dreamed that he was broad awake
watching the height of the tide. For this one night, he could rest
without any very painful thoughts of poor Erica, for she was prepared
for his remaining out till the middle of the next day, at least.

When he awoke in the morning, the scene was marvellously changed from
that on which he had closed his eyes. His cave was so dim that he could
scarcely distinguish its white floor from its rocky sides. The water
was low, and the cleft therefore enlarged, so that he saw at once that
now was the time for making his fire--now when there was the freest
access for the air. Yet he could not help pausing to admire what he
saw. He could see now a long strip of the fiord,--a perspective of
waters and of shores, ending in a lofty peak still capped with snow, and
glittering in the sunlight. The whole landscape was bathed in light, as
warm as noon; for, though it was only six in the morning, the sun had
been up for several hours. As Rolf gazed, and reckoned up the sum of
what he saw,--the many miles of water, and the long range of rocks, he
felt, for a moment, as if not yet secure from Hund,--as if he must be
easily visible while he saw so much. But it was not so, and Rolf smiled
at his own momentary fear, when he remembered how, as a child, he had
tried to count the stars he could see at once through a hole pricked by
a needle in a piece of paper, and how, for that matter, all that we ever
see is through the little circle of the pupil of the eye. He smiled
when he considered that while, from his recess, he could see the united
navy of Norway and Denmark, if anchored in the fiord, his enemy could
not see even his habitation, otherwise than by peeping under the bushes
which overhung the cleft--and this only at low-water; so he began to
sing, while rubbing together, with all his might, the dry sticks of fir
with which his fire wa