The way, if such it might be called, threading the mazes through a chain of low hills, and consisting only of a loose and ever-shifting bed of dry sand, grew every moment more and more perplexed.  Had it been daylight, there appeared no object by which to direct my course,—­no mark that might distinguish whether or not my path was in a right line or a circle:  I seemed to be rambling through a succession of amphitheatres formed by the sand-hills, every one so closely resembling its neighbour that I could not recognise any decided features on which to found that distinction of ideas which philosophers term individuality.  In almost any other mood of the mind this would have been a puzzling and disagreeable dilemma; but at that moment it appeared of the least possible consequence to me where the dark labyrinth might terminate.

Striving to escape from thought, from recollection, the wild and cheerless monotony of my path seemed to convey a desperate stillness to the mind, to quench in some measure the fiery outburst of my spirit.  It was but a deceitful, calm—­the deadening lull of spent anguish:  I awoke to a keener sense of misery, from which there was no escape.

But it was not to lament over my own griefs that I commenced my story.  Let the dust of oblivion cover them; I would not pain another by the recital.  There are sorrows—­short ages of agony—­into the dark origin of which none would dare to pry:  one heart alone feels, hides, and nourishes them for ever!

Night now came on, heavy and dark; not a star twinkled above me; I seemed to have left the habitations of men.  In whatever direction I turned not a light was visible; all fellowship with my kind had vanished.  No sound broke the unvarying stillness but the heavy plunge of my horse’s feet and the hollow moan of the sea.  Gradually I began to rouse from my stupor:  awaking, as from a dream, my senses grew rapidly conscious of the perils by which I was surrounded.  I knew not but some hideous gulf awaited me, or the yawning sea, towards which I fancied my course tended, was destined to terminate this adventure.  It was chiefly, however, a feeling of loneliness, a dread, unaccountable in its nature, that seemed to haunt me.  There was nothing so very uncommon or marvellous in my situation; yet the horror I endured is unutterable.  The demon of fear seemed to possess my frame, and benumbed every faculty.  I saw, or thought I saw, shapes hideous and indistinct rising before me, but so rapidly that I could not trace their form ere they vanished.  I felt convinced it was the mind that was perturbed, acting outwardly upon the senses, rendered more than usually irritable by the alarm and excitation they had undergone—­yet I could not shake off the spell.  I heard a sharp rustling past my ear; I involuntarily raised my hand; but nothing met my touch save the damp and chilly hair about my temples.  I tried to rally myself out of these apprehensions, but in vain:  reason has little