I can think undisturbedly on what
I have done, and have still to do; and if God sends slumber to a
creature so exhausted, it shall be most welcome."
So saying, the boy drew his hand from Lord Nigel's, and, drawing
around him and partly over his face the folds of his ample cloak, he
resigned himself to sleep or meditation, while his companion,
notwithstanding the exhausting scenes of this and the preceding day,
continued his pensive walk up and down the apartment.
Every reader has experienced, that times occur, when far from being
lord of external circumstances, man is unable to rule even the wayward
realm of his own thoughts. It was Nigel's natural wish to consider his
own situation coolly, and fix on the course which it became him as a
man of sense and courage to adopt; and yet, in spite of himself, and
notwithstanding the deep interest of the critical state in which he
was placed, it did so happen that his fellow-prisoner's situation
occupied more of his thoughts than did his own. There was no
accounting for this wandering of the imagination, but also there was
no striving with it. The pleading tones of one of the sweetest voices
he had ever heard, still rung in his ear, though it seemed that sleep
had now fettered the tongue of the speaker. He drew near on tiptoe to
satisfy himself whether it were so. The folds of the cloak hid the
lower part of his face entirely; but the bonnet, which had fallen a
little aside, permitted him to see the forehead streaked with blue
veins, the closed eyes, and the long silken eyelashes.
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