At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.
The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief.

I ran not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house was lost in the alder bushes.

An uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale.

As I kept on I noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound.

It struck me forcibly as resembling an island in the sea.