Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/157

 was incessantly divided between my painful sensations and my feverish dreams.

There is no standard by which time can be measured, but the succession of our thoughts, and the changes that take place in the external world: from the latter I was totally excluded; the former made the lapse of some hours appear like the tediousness of weeks and months. At length a new sensation recalled my rambling meditations, and gave substance to my fears: I now felt the cravings of hunger, and perceived that, unless my deliverance were speedily effected, I must suffer a tedious and lingering death.

I once more tasked my understanding and my senses to discover the nature of my present situation, and the means of escape. I listened to catch some sound: I heard an unequal and varying echo, sometimes near and sometimes distant, sometimes dying away and sometimes swelling into loudness: it was unlike any thing I had before heard; but it was evident that it arose from wind sweeping through spacious halls and winding passages. These tokens were incompatible with the result of the examination I had made; if my hands were true, I was immured between walls through which there was no avenue.

I now exerted my voice, and cried as loud as my wasted strength would admit: its echoes were sent back to me in broken and confused sounds and from above. This effort was casual; but some part of that uncertainty in which I was involved was instantly dispelled by it. In passing through the cavern on the former day, I have mentioned the verge of the pit at which I arrived: to acquaint me as far as was possible with the dimensions of the place, I had hallooed with all my force, knowing that sound is reflected according to the distance and relative positions of the substances from which it is repelled.

The effect produced by my voice on this occasion resembled with remarkable exactness the effect which was then produced. Was I then shut up in the same cavern? Had I reached the brink of the same precipice, and been thrown headlong into that vacuity? Whence else could arise the bruises which 1 had received but from my fall? Yet all