It was eleven o'clock when the boy woke.

All the excitement of the past days had culminated in the great exhaustion of the night before.
He had slept as a child might sleep--dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly.
In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world.

A magician's wand had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness.

Paris was under the dominion of the frost.
Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within him apprised him of this change.

He inhaled the crisp coldness of the air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great leap of the spirit, he recognized his position.