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At the same time, his spirit was so alive within him, even while he gave way to this transient fit of oblivion, that he remained almost awake even with shut eyes, and no hound ever seemed to sleep more lightly than our Anglo-Saxon at the Golden Gate of Constantinople. And now the slumberer, as the loiterer had been before, was the subject of observation to the accidental passengers.
Over her closed eyes the long lashes trembled almost imperceptibly, and a delicate pink flush came and went on the cheek of the slumberer. The finely-cut nostrils rose and fell with her regular breathing, and she lay there, a picture of innocence, of peace, smiling in dreams, and of the slumber that the gods bestow on early youth, when care has not yet come.
And every ignoble murder of legend or history beckoned him with the hands of red expediency. He ended by going to the door and opening it cautiously as he had done the night before. But this time the operation was more skillful and no warning click disturbed the slumberer. He crept out into the night, down the cliff's edge, looking back for the betraying shadow of a hidden spy.
The slumberer roused in darkness by the relentless insane-seeming bell which hales him to duty, melts at the charms of sleep, and feels that logic is with him in his preference of his pillow; but the tireless revolving world outside, nature's pitiless antagonist, has hung one of its balances about him, and his actions are directed by the state of the scales, wherein duty weighs deep and desireability swings like a pendant doll: so he throws on his harness, astounded, till his blood quickens with work, at the round of sacrifices demanded of nature: which is indeed curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the infallibility of our august mother.
Ottilie alone stood contemplating the slumberer, whose features still retained their gentle sweet expression, with a kind of envy. The life of her soul was killed; why should the bodily life any longer drag on in weariness?
Toward morning a slight moisture broke out all over him, and his sleep that was heavy, became soft and tranquil. The crisis was past! In order not to disturb the quiet slumberer, Mrs. Fletcher sat down by the bedside perfectly still. It was not very long before, over-wearied as she was, sleep likewise stole over her senses. It was daylight when she was awakened by hearing her name called.
The surest and often only effective means was to tickle the slumberer gently on the soles of the bare feet with some airy, delicate instrument such as my tack-hammer, or a convenient broom-handle or flat-iron.
Few animals have been the cause, perhaps, of so many superstitions as the common domestic Cat; most of them are too well known here to require repetition, but the still prevalent, popular prejudice that this creature sucks the breath of sleepers, especially children, and thereby kills them, has been signally refuted by modern naturalists, who observe, that even if it were capable of drawing a person's breath thus, the construction of its mouth renders it impossible to impede the respiration of the slumberer through mouth and nostrils at the same time; this vulgar superstition probably arose from cats liking to lie warm, and nestling consequently in beds, cribs, and cradles.
Clouds flitted swiftly in the sky, like bodies of armed men coming up to battle at the call of their leader's trumpet. A thick rain-drop fell now and then, while occasionally hoarse mutterings of thunder sounded in the distance; yet the slumberer was not arous'd. It was strange that Wild Frank did not awake. Perhaps his ocean life had taught him to rest undisturbed amid the jarring of elements.
Gurney noticed there was a change for the worse in the little slumberer, and she had just remarked it to Allie, when Mamie languidly opened her large blue eyes which now shone as if they reflected the light of the heavenly land "Mamma! Mamma!" she called in a low but very distinct voice. Allie bent over her and asked, "What is it darling? Mamma has gone to lie down for a little while."
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