Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/26



—it is to be hoped satisfactorily—explained who Sylvester was, it will now ho quite right to proceed.

And it will, in the first place, be necessary to state that Sylvester, at the period of the death of Dr. Sound, was in the seventeenth year of his age.

He was tall and slightly made, and while his features were finely formed, his jet black hair, which hung in ringlets over his shoulders, contrasted strongly with his countenance which was pale in the extreme, and of which the expression was that of repose. There was, indeed, the spirit of mischief lurking in his eye, but while he was awake that spirit was asleep: it developed itself only in his dreams. It was then that it prompted him to perpetrate all sorts of wild and extraordinary tricks: it was then that it converted him from a calm, graceful, amiable youth, into a perfect little devil.

This, to a certain extent, was known to the doctor: hence it was that he was kept so constantly at home; but it was not known to any other creature in existence: it was not known even to Sylvester himself; he was perfectly unconscious of being a somnambulist: he had not even the most remote suspicion of the fact; nor had he, when awake, the slightest recollection of the dreams upon which he had acted. During sleep, indeed, his recollection of their nature was most perfect—he would, for example, frequently commence a letter one night and finish the next—but when awake, his memory, as far as those dreams were concerned, was in oblivion.

Anxiously had the doctor watched him night after night. He had even allowed him to go from his chamber, but although he closely followed, he never checked him. He felt perfectly sure that the means which he had adopted in his own case—he having been himself a somnambulist—would eventually cure his son; and certainly, in the ease of Sylvester, a cure might by those means have been effected, but just as a change became perceptible, the doctor unhappily died.

During the week which elapsed between the death of Dr. Sound and his funeral, Sylvester remained in the house; but the day following that on which the ceremony was performed, his Aunt Eleanor—a maiden lady of exemplary character—took him to her cottage at Cotherstone Grange—about fifteen miles from the residence of her late brother conceiving that an immediate change of scene might be highly beneficial to hi- health, as he was then more than usually languid.

On their way to the (Grange, Sylvester was silent, and as of course Aunt Eleanor ascribed this silence to the grief which sprang from the loss they had sustained, she felt it to be her duty as a Christian to offer