Thus, if I desire to go out, I am promised by Dorcas that I shall walk in the park at night, and see the cows milked, just as she would propose such an amusement to a child.

But she takes care never to keep her word, if it is in her power to do so.
In the meantime, there has stolen on me insensibly an indifference to my freedom--a carelessness about my situation, for which I am unable to account, unless it be the consequence of weakness and loss of blood.

I have read of men who, immured as I am, have surprised the world by the address with which they have successfully overcome the most formidable obstacles to their escape; and when I have heard such anecdotes, I have said to myself, that no one who is possessed only of a fragment of freestone, or a rusty nail to grind down rivets and to pick locks, having his full leisure to employ in the task, need continue the inhabitant of a prison.

Here, however, I sit, day after day, without a single effort to effect my liberation.
Yet my inactivity is not the result of despondency, but arises, in part at least, from feelings of a very different cast.

My story, long a mysterious one, seems now upon the verge of some strange development; and I feel a solemn impression that I ought to wait the course of events, to struggle against which is opposing my feeble efforts to the high will of fate.