A stillness, as of a dead and ruined world, possessed in all its quarters the appalling scene.

The deep echoes of the sentries' footsteps and the faint dirging of the melancholy winds were no more.

The blood that had as yet dripped from his wound, made no sound now in the Pagan's ear; even his own agony of terror was as silent as were the visionary demons who had aroused it.

Days, years, centuries, seemed to pass, as he lay gazing up, in a trance of horror, into his realm of peopled and ghostly darkness.

At last nature yielded under the trial; the phantom prospect suddenly whirled round him with fearful velocity, and his senses sought refuge from the thraldom of their own creation in a deep and welcome swoon.
Time had moved wearily onward, the chiding winds had many times waved the dry locks of his hair to and fro about his brow, as if to bid him awaken and arise, ere he again recovered his consciousness.