Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/275

 On the preceding night, although painfully excited and disturbed, the action of her mind had still been coherent and natural—the objects which had then passed in review before her were real, though distressing, and she had mind and memory enough to think them out, and follow them up to their legitimate conclusion; but now it was the delirium of coming fever—her mind drifted beyond her control, and her brain was filled with the rapidly shifting, weird, and often grotesque visions of an incoherent and disordered imagination.

A strange physical drowsiness, that was not sleep, contended with a fierce mental activity that was not wakefulness; and she lay, vaguely watching the procession of fantastic figures which moved around her, wondering if they could be real, yet wholly unable to convince herself that they were false; now feebly laughing at their mocking show—then cowering from them in weak terror.

Slowly—slowly, the heavy hours of the night crept by; and was it wonderful if, when the tardy morning broke at last, she was wholly unable to rise—unable to lift her