CHAPTER NINETEEN.
"How many horses has your father got ?" "Three." "What colour are they ?" "Black, white, and grey." "Turn round three times, and catch whom you may." That, as everyone knows, is the classical way of beginning the game of Blind Man's Buff; and supposing that the blinded man _pro tem_, is properly bandaged, and cannot get a squint of light up by the side of his nose, and also supposing that he confuses himself by turning round the proper number of times honestly, he will be in profound darkness, and in utter ignorance of the direction of door, window, or the salient objects in the room.
Take another case.

Suppose a lad to have eaten a hearty supper of some particularly hard pastry.

The probabilities are that he will either have the peculiar form of dream known as nightmare, or some time in the night he will get out of bed, and go wandering about his room in the darkness, to awake at last, cold, confused, and asking himself where he is, without the slightest ability to give a reasonable answer to his question.
It has fallen to the lot of some people to be lost in a fog--words, these, which can only be appreciated by those who have passed through a similar experience.
The writer has gone through these experiences more than once, and fully realised the peculiar sensation of helplessness, confusion, and brain numbing which follows.

Dark as pitch is mostly a figure of speech, for the obscurity is generally relieved by something in the form of dull light which does enable a person to see his hand before him; but the blackness around, when Archibald Raystoke began to come back to his senses, would have left pitch far behind as to depth of tint.
His head ached, and there was a feeling in it suggestive of the contents having been turned into brain-fritters in a pan--fritters which had bubbled and turned brown, and then been burned till they were quite black.
He opened his eyes, and then put his hands up to feel if they were open.
They were undoubtedly, and he hurt them in making the test, for he half fancied, and he had a confused notion, that a great handkerchief had been tied over them.

But though they were undoubtedly open he could not see.