He
thought, dejectedly, what a fool he was ever to have come back;
or even having come back, not to have taken greater pains to stay
up aloft, instead of pitching abruptly head-foremost into such a
select company without an invitation. He thought, too, what a
cold, damp, unwholesome chamber they had lodged him in, and how
apt he would be to have a bad attack of ague and miasmatic fever,
if they would only let him live long enough to enjoy those
blessings. And this having brought him to the end of his
melancholy meditation, he began to reflect how he could best
amuse himself in the interim, before quitting this vale of tears.
The candle was still blinking feebly on the floor, shedding tears
of wax in its feeble prostration, and it suddenly reminded him of
the dwarf's advice to examine his dark bower of repose. So be
picked it up and snuffed it with his fingers, and held it aloof,
much as Robinson Crusoe held the brand in the dark cavern with
the dead goat.
In the velvet pall of blackness before alluded to, its small, wan
ray pierced but a few inches, and only made the darkness visible.
But Sir Norman groped his way to the wall, which he found to be
all over green and noisome slime, and broken out into a cold,
clammy perspiration, as though it were at its last gasp.
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