Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/56

32 upheld, he grew fond (as is the way of people in distress); and, being full of poor thoughts for this world, played tricks in his imagination, fancying that he and his three comrades were dead, and wandering amongst the fields of Heaven, with the same honest faces, but free from care; and, so musing, he fell into a placid sleep.

If it is a joy to find a good man happy in this world, listen, and rejoice with me.

When midnight came he was awoke by low and melancholy singing in his ear, and raising his eyes he beheld a figure and face of heavenly beauty leaning over him. So strongly did this blend with his dream, that he was some time entranced, between sleep and wake, certainty and doubt; but when the hand of this beautiful woman fell upon his head, the vision of his dream was gone. She, sitting herself beside him, began, with actions full of grace, to comfort him, and bade him hope that he might live after sun-rise, for all the warrant of the king; while he, struck with the strangeness of the thing, sat looking and adoring by turns. Thus the time passed in pleasant converse; he ever desiring his liberty, and she giving him hopes. When the morning came, the lady left his prison by the same pass she had entered, the