Page 184 [184]
OCR
136 about us, and even if we dream, words which are really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and imagination pecome so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost a matter of impossibility to separate the two. Nor is this the most striking phenomenon incidental to such a state. It is an ascertained fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that before us, will be influenced, and materially influenced, by the mere silent presence of some external object which may not have been near us when we closed our eyes, and of whose vicinity we have had no waking consciousness. Oliver knew perfectly well that he was in his own little room, that his books were lying on the table before him, and that the sweet air was stirring among the creeping plants outside, —and yet he was asleep. Suddenly the scene changed, the air became close and confined, and he thought with a glow of terror that he was in the Jew’s house again. There sat the hideous old man in his accustomed corner pointing at him, and whispering to another man with his face averted, who sat beside him, c Hush, my dear!” he thought he heard the Jew say; "it is him, sure enough. Come away.” “He!” the other man seemed to answer; “could I mistake him, think you? If a crowd of devils were to put themselves them, there is something that would tell me how to point him out. If you buried him fifty feet deep, and took me across his grave, I should know, if there wasn’t a Wither his flesh, I should!” The man seemed to say this with such dreadful hatred, that Oliver awoke with the fear and started up. Good God! what was that which sent the blood tingling to his heart, and deprived him of voice or power to move! ‘There—tbere—at the window—close before him—so close, that he could have almost touched him before he started back— with his eyes peering into the room, and meeting his—there stood the Jew !— and beside him, white with rage, or fear, or both, were the scowling features of the very man who had accosted him at the mon yard! before his eyes, and they were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them, and their look was as firmly impressed upon his memory as if it had been deeply carved in stone, and set before him from his birth. He stood transfixed for a moment, and then, leaping from the window into the garden, called loudly for help. CHAPTER THE TWELFTH, Containing the unsatisfactory result of Oliver's adventure, and a conversation of some importance between Harry Maylie and Rose. WHEN the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver’s cries, hurried to the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely able to articulate the words “The Jew! the Jew!” Mr. Giles was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant; but Harry Maylie, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who had heard Oliver’s his- . tory from his mother, understood it at once, “What direction did he take?” he asked, catching up a heavy stick which was standing in a corner. “That,” replied Oliver, pointing out the course the men had taken. “I missed them all in an instant.” “Then they are in the ditch!” said Harry. ‘Follow, and keep as near me as ou can.” So saying he sprang over the edge, and darted off with a speed which rendered it matter of exceeding difficulty for the others to keep near him. Giles followed as well as he could, and Oliver followed too, and in the course of a minute or two, Mr. Losberne, who had been out walking, and just then returned, tumbled over the hedge after them, and picking himself up with more agility than he could have been sup to possess, struck into the same course at no contemptible speed, shouting all the while most prodigiously to know what was the matter. On they all went; nor stopped they once to breathe until the leader, striking Oliver, began to search narrowly the ditch and hedge adjoining, which aficrded time for the remainder of the party to come up, and for Oliver to communicate to Mr. Losberne the circumstances that had led to so vigorous a pursuit. The search was all in vain. There were not even the traces of recent footsteps to be seen. ‘They stood now on the summit of a little hill, commanding the
