“Nor do I mean to break it. But surely sleep is not the first thing! Surely, surely, action takes precedence of repose!”
“A man can do nothing he is not fit to do.—See! did I not tell you Mara would do her part?”
I looked whither he pointed, and saw a white spot moving at an acute angle with the line taken by the leopardess.
“There she is!” he cried. “The spotted leopardess is strong, but the white is stronger!”
“I have seen them fight: the combat did not appear decisive as to that.”
“How should such eyes tell which have never slept? The princess did not confess herself beaten—that she never does—but she fled! When she confesses her last hope gone, that it is indeed hard to kick against the goad, then will her day begin to dawn! Come; come! He who cannot act must make haste to sleep!”
CHAPTER XXXI. THE SEXTON’S OLD HORSE
I stood and watched the last gleam of the white leopardess melt away, then turned to follow my guide—but reluctantly. What had I to do with sleep? Surely reason was the same in every world, and what reason could there be in going to sleep with the dead, when the hour was calling the live man? Besides, no one would wake me, and how could I be certain of waking early—of waking at all?—the sleepers in that house let morning glide into noon, and noon into night, nor ever stirred! I murmured, but followed, for I knew not what else to do.
The librarian walked on in silence, and I walked silent as he. Time and space glided past us. The sun set; it began to grow dark, and I felt in the air the spreading cold of the chamber of death. My heart sank lower and lower. I began to lose sight of the lean, long-coated figure, and at length could no more hear his swishing stride through the heather. But then I heard instead the slow-flapping wings of the raven; and, at intervals, now a firefly, now a gleaming butterfly rose into the rayless air.