ent to assist him. Then Penn
was dreamily aware of being lifted in the strong arms of this double
individual, and borne away, over rocks, and among thickets, along the
mountain side; until even this misty ray of consciousness deserted him,
and he fell into a stupor like death.
And what was this he saw on awaking? Had he really died, and was this
unearthly place a vestibule of the infernal regions? Days and nights of
anguish, burning, and delirium, relieved at intervals by the same
death-like stupor, had passed over him; and here he lay at length,
exhausted, the terrible fever conquered, and his soul looking feebly
forth and taking note of things.
And strange enough things appeared to him! He was in an apartment of
prodigious and uncouth architecture, dimly lighted from one side by some
opening invisible to him, and by a blazing fire in a little fireplace
built on the broad stone floor. The fireplace was without chimney, but a
steady draught of air, from the side where the opening seemed to be,
swept the smoke away into sombre recesses, where it mingled with the
shadows of the place, and was lost in gloom which even the glare of the
flames failed to illumine.
Such a cavernous room Penn seemed to have seen in his dreams. The same
irregular, rocky roof started up from the wall by his bed, and stretched
away into vague and obscure distance. All was familiar to him, but all
was somehow mixed up with frightful fantasies which had vanished with
the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles
of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which
had visited him in his delirious visions,--all these were airy nothings;
but the cave was real.
Here he lay, on a rude bed constructed of four logs, forming the ends
and sides, with canvas stretched across them, and secured with nails.
Under him was a mattress of moss, over him a blanket like that which he
remembered to have had wrapped about him last night in the field.
Last night! Poor Penn was deeply perplexed when he endeavored to
remember whether his mysterious awaking in the open air occurred last
night, or many nights ago. He moved his head feebly to look for Toby.
Which Toby? for all through his sufferings the same two Tobys, one good
and the other evil, who had taken him from the field, had appeared still
to attend him, and he now more than half expected to see the faithful
old negro duplicated, and waiting upon him with two b
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