“Faith in what?”
“In your love.”
“My love?”
“Ay—for yourself. I wish you a good evening, and pleasant dreams. Hem!”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Ada’s Lone Home.—The Summer.—An Adventure.
“Blessed,” says the simple squire of Don Quixote, “is the man who first invented sleep.” What would the spirit-worn—the persecuted—the heart-stricken—and the desolate do without sleep? Oh, if there be one heavenly seal set upon the pure and innocent heart, it is that dear impressive slumber—deep and dreamless as infants, which, like a soft south wind in dreariest winter, lays for a time the wearied senses, in a blessed repose. Then is the imagination freed from earthly dross, and clinging cares, carried far, far away to happier times. The poor prisoner then escapes from his dungeon—his fetters drop from his benumbed limbs, and he lives again in the glorious sunshine, with the blue heavens alone looking down upon him, and the green earth in all its wondrous beauty stretching far before him. The wave-tossed mariner,
“Absent so long from his heart’s home,”
will, in the dreamy watches of the night, revisit the loved ones that are far away. The freezing winds of the “blustrous north” will lack their power to chill his blood—the lashing surges will, by
“Some strange magic,”