eing greatly fatigued both in mind and body, gradually fell
asleep.

He could not have closed his eyes five minutes, when he was awakened by
a scream, and starting up in that kind of terror which affects a person
suddenly roused, saw, to his great astonishment, that his charge had
struggled into a sitting posture, and with eyes almost starting from
their sockets, cold dew standing on his forehead, and in a fit of
trembling which quite convulsed his frame, was calling to him for help.

'Good Heaven, what is this?' said Nicholas, bending over him. 'Be calm;
you have been dreaming.'

'No, no, no!' cried Smike, clinging to him. 'Hold me tight. Don't let me
go. There, there. Behind the tree!'

Nicholas followed his eyes, which were directed to some distance behind
the chair from which he himself had just risen. But, there was nothing
there.

'This is nothing but your fancy,' he said, as he strove to compose him;
'nothing else, indeed.'

'I know better. I saw as plain as I see now,' was the answer. 'Oh! say
you'll keep me with you. Swear you won't leave me for an instant!'

'Do I ever leave you?' returned Nicholas. 'Lie down again--there! You
see I'm here. Now, tell me; what was it?'

'Do you remember,' said Smike, in a low voice, and glancing fearfully
round, 'do you remember my telling you of the man who first took me to
the school?'

'Yes, surely.'

'I raised my eyes, just now, towards that tree--that one with the thick
trunk--and there, with his eyes fixed on me, he stood!'

'Only reflect for one moment,' said Nicholas; 'granting, for an instant,
that it's likely he is alive and wandering about a lonely place like
this, so far removed from the public road, do you think that at this
distance of time you could possibly know that man again?'

'Anywhere--in any dress,' returned Smike; 'but, just now, he stood
leaning upon his stick and looking at me, exactly as I told you I
remembered him. He was dusty with walking, and poorly dressed--I think
his clothes were ragged--but directly I saw him, the wet night, his face
when he left me, the parlour I was left in, and the people that were
there, all seemed to come back together. When he knew I saw him, he
looked frightened; for he started, and shrunk away. I have thought of
him by day, and dreamt of him by night. He looked in my sleep, when I
was quite a little child, and has looked in my sleep ever since, as he
did just now.'

Nicholas endeavoured, by every persua