His thoughts were evidently wandering back to the fearful night of the fire at the Old Smithy, and his busy fancy was enacting over again that dreadful drama of blood.
He tossed his arms wildly to and fro, and groaned and uttered the half-stifled screams which came from a disturbed stupor, in the agony of his mind.
“Save—save her,” he said. “The child of the dead! I cannot do the deed. Help, oh, help me, my heart is burning—charring in my breast.”
He then, in his intense mental suffering, bit his under lip till the blood trickled on to his breast, and with the actual pain he awoke, crying—
“Spare me—spare me! Oh, do not scorch my eye-balls so—my brain is on fire! Oh, God, have mercy—mercy—mercy.”
He opened his eyes, and the full glare of the sunlight fell upon them, blinding him for the moment. Then he opened them again, and glanced around him in speechless wonder as to where he was.
His first impression was that he was dead, and in some other world. Then he clasped his hands over his face and then tried to think. But a confusion and want of images in his brain quite rendered such an effort vain, and at length he became only alive to so horrible a sensation of thirst that he shrieked aloud,—
“Water—water—water!”
He rose to his knees, and glaring around him with his parched tongue hanging from his mouth, he saw a shining sheet of limpid water at some distance before him. Then, still gasping the word “water” he attempted to rise, but so confused was his head from the effects of the opiate that had been so unstintingly administered to him, that, after tottering a step or two, he sank to the earth again. His awful thirst was however, unbearable, and with a dizzy brow and aching eyes, he crawled on his hands and knees towards the pond.
He was long in reaching it, for he deviated from the strait track largely; but when he did, oh, what an exquisite pleasure it was to lie by the brink and dash his head in, drinking up huge quantities and causing the cold stream to bubble in his mouth and ears.