All the morning he had been lying hidden in a corner of the sheepfold devouring it, the rolling verse imprinting itself on the boy's plastic memory by a sort of enchantment-- Yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful.
He chanted the words aloud, flinging them out in an ecstasy of pleasure.

Before him, as it seemed, there stretched that very plain 'forlorn and wild,' with its black fissures and its impenetrable horizons; the fitful moonlight stood for the glimmering of the Tartarean flames; the remembered words and the actual sights played into and fused with each other, till in the cold and darkness the boy thrilled all through with that mingling of joy and terror which is only possible to the creature of fine gifts and high imagination.
Jenny Crum, too! A few more hours and he might see her face to face--as 'Lias had seen her.

He quaked a little at the thought, but he would not have flinched for the world.

_He_ was not going to lose his wits, as 'Lias did; and as for Louie, if she were frightened it would do her good to be afraid of something.
Hark! He turned, stooped, put his hand to his ear.
The sound he heard had startled him, turned him pale.

But he soon recovered himself.