one of the tall great houses, opened the door of a room which was numbered, and left me there without a word.  I cannot convey to any one the bewildered consternation with which I felt myself deposited here; and as the steps of my conductor died away in the long corridor, I sat down, and looking myself in the face, as it were, tried to make out what it was that had happened to me.  The room was small and bare.  There was but one thing hung upon the undecorated walls, and that was a long list of printed regulations which I had not the courage for the moment to look at.  The light was indifferent, though the room was high up, and the street from the window looked far away below.  I cannot tell how long I sat there thinking, and yet it could scarcely be called thought.  I asked myself over and over again, Where am I? is it a prison? am I shut in, to leave this enclosure no more? what am I to do? how is the time to pass?  I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to realize all that had happened to me; but nothing save a whirl through my head of disconnected thoughts seemed possible, and some force was upon me to open my eyes again, to see the blank room, the dull light, the vacancy round me in which there was nothing to interest the mind, nothing to please the eye,—­a blank wherever I turned.  Presently there came upon me a burning regret for everything I had left,—­for the noisy town with all its tumults and cruelties, for the dark valley with all its dangers.  Everything seemed bearable, almost agreeable, in comparison with this.  I seemed to have been brought here to make acquaintance once more with myself, to learn over again what manner of man I was.  Needless knowledge, acquaintance unnecessary, unhappy! for what was there in me to make me to myself a good companion?  Never, I knew, could I separate myself from that eternal consciousness; but it was cruelty to force the contemplation upon me.  All blank, blank around me, a prison!  And was this to last forever?

I do not know how long I sat, rapt in this gloomy vision; but at last it occurred to me to rise and try the door, which to my astonishment was open.  I went out with a throb of new hope.  After all, it might not be necessary to come back.  There might be other expedients; I might fall among friends.  I turned down the long echoing stairs, on which I met various people, who took no notice of me, and in whom I felt no interest save a desire to avoid them, and at last reached the street.  To be out of doors in the air was something, though there was no wind, but a motionless still atmosphere which nothing disturbed.  The streets, indeed, were full of movement, but not of life—­though this seems a paradox.  The passengers passed on their way in long regulated lines,—­those who went towards the gates keeping rigorously to one side of the pavement, those who came, to the other.  They talked to each other here and there; but whenever two men in uniform, such as those who had been my conductors, appeared, silence