The night descended, and when he came to himself, its silences were
deep around him. It was not dark: there was no moon, but the
twilight was clear. He could read the face of his watch: it was
twelve o'clock! No one had missed him! He was very hungry! But he
had been hungrier before and survived it! In his wallet were still
some remnants of oat-cake! He took it in his hand, and stepping out
on the bartizan, crept with careful steps round to the watch-tower.
There he seated himself in the stone chair, and ate his dry morsels
in the starry presences. Sleep had refreshed him, and he was wide
awake, yet there was on him the sense of a strange existence. Never
before had he so known himself! Often had he passed the night in
the open air, but never before had his night-consciousness been
such! Never had he felt the same way alone. He was parted from the
whole earth, like the ship-boy on the giddy mast! Nothing was below
but a dimness; the earth and all that was in it was massed into a
vague shadow. It was as if he had died and gone where existence was
independent of solidity and sense. Above him was domed the vast of
the starry heavens; he could neither flee from it nor ascend to it!
For a moment he felt it the symbol of life, yet an unattainable
hopeless thing. He hung suspended between heaven and earth, an
outcast of both, a denizen of neither! The true life seemed ever to
retreat, never to await his grasp.
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