amless sleep.

He awoke to bodily pain, and mental exultation; he had broken the fatal
spell. Yes, it was broken; another and another day passed, and her image
molested him no more. But he caught himself sighing at his victory.

The birds got tamer and tamer, they perched upon his hand. Two of them
let him gild their little claws. Eating but once in two days he had more
to give them.

His tranquility was not to last long.

A woman's voice came in from the outside, told him his own story in a
very few words, and asked him to tell her where Gerard was to be found.

He was so astounded he could only say, with an instinct of self-defence,
"Pray for the soul of Gerard the son of Eli!" meaning that he was dead
to the world. And he sat wondering.

When the woman was gone, he determined, after an inward battle, to risk
being seen, and he peeped after her to see who it could be; but he took
so many precautions, and she ran so quickly back to her friend, that the
road was clear.

"Satan!" said he directly.

And that night back came his visions of earthly love and happiness so
vividly, he could count every auburn hair in Margaret's head, and see
the pupils of her eyes.

Then he began to despair, and said, "I must leave this country; here I
am bound fast in memory's chain;" and began to dread his cell. He said,
"A breath from hell hath infected it, and robbed even these holy words
of their virtue." And unconsciously imitating St. Jerome, a victim
of earthly hallucinations, as overpowering, and coarser, he took his
warmest covering out into the wood hard by, and there flung down under
a tree that torn and wrinkled leather bag of bones, which a little ago
might have served a sculptor for Apollo.

Whether the fever of his imagination intermitted, as a master mind of
our day has shown that all things intermit(9) or that this really broke
some subtle link, I know not, but his sleep was dreamless.

He awoke nearly frozen, but warm with joy within.

"I shall yet be a true hermit, Dei gratia," said he.

The next day some good soul left on his little platform a new lambs-wool
pelisse and cape, warm, soft, and ample.

He had a moment's misgiving on account of its delicious softness and
warmth; but that passed. It was the right skin(10), and a mark that
Heaven approved his present course.

It restored warmth to his bones after he came in from his short rest.

And now, at one moment he saw victory before him if he could but