a long and dreary night was that, harassed with doubts, and
worn out with speculations! My mind had been much weakened by my fever,
and whenever I followed a train of thought too long, confusion was sure
to ensue. The terror of this chaotic condition, where all people and
lands and ideas and incidents jostle against each other in mad turmoil,
can only be estimated by one who has felt it. Like the awful rush of
sensations of him who is sliding down some steep descent to a tremendous
precipice, one feels the gradual approach of that dreamy condition where
reason is lost, and the mind a mere waif upon the waters.

"Here 's your breakfast," said the jailer, as he stopped the course of
my revery. "And the Brigadier hopes you 'll be speedy with it, for you
must reach Maltz by nightfall."

"Tell me," said I, eagerly, "was there a circus company here yesterday
evening? Did they exhibit on the Platz there?"

"You are a deep one, you are!" muttered he, sulkily to himself, and left
the cell.

CHAPTER XLIII. I AM CONFINED IN THE AMBRAS SCHLOSS

I bore up admirably on my journey. I felt I was doing a very heroic
thing. By my personation of Harpar, I was securing that poor fellow's
escape, and giving him ample time to get over the Austrian frontier, and
many a mile away from the beaks of the Double Eagle. I had read of such
things in history, and I resolved I would not derogate from the proudest
records of such self-devotion. Had I but remembered how long my illness
had lasted, I might have easily seen that Harpar could by this time have
arrived at Calcutta; but, unfortunately for me, I had no gauge of time
whatever, and completely forgot the long interval of my fever.

On reaching Innspruck, I was sent on to an old chateau some ten miles
away, called the Ambras Schloss, and being consigned to the charge of a
retired artillery officer there, they seemed to have totally forgotten
all about me. I lived with my old jailer just as if I were his friend:
we worked together in the garden, pruned, and raked, and hoed, and
weeded; we smoked and fished, and mended our nets on wet days, and read,
living exactly as might any two people in a remote out-of-the-world
spot.

There is a sort of armory at the Ambras, chiefly of old Tyrolese weapons
of an early period,--maces and halberds, and double-handed swords,
and such-like,--and one of our pastimes was arranging and settling and
cataloguing them, for which, in the ancient records of