Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/274

 *dergone during the last two days; but sleep seemed denied her.

Oh! how welcome to her would have been only one short hour of that calm, dreamless slumber, light as the sleep of infancy, which she had never learned to appreciate till the lesson came to her through its loss. Oh! for only one short hour of blessed sleep, to calm her wild, feverish unrest—to take the sting of pain out of the hot and dazzled eyes, whose aching lids seemed as if they would never again close over the strained vision.

In vain. She lay, restlessly tossing and moaning—only made conscious of a momentary drowse, when a sudden nervous start betrayed to her that she had been treading the border-lands of sleep. Yet it was not so much the sad memories of the past, or the doubts, hopes, and anxieties of the future, which dwelt now upon her mind, and kept her waking, as it had been the night before. Her mind was perhaps quite as much and as unnaturally overtasked; but it was far less clear, and its condition was wholly different.