rs? Two o'clock! It will so soon be
four, that it is not worth the trouble to go to bed again."

"I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now," said Vendale;
"sit here and keep me company, and welcome."

Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer soon returned in
a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat down on opposite sides of the
hearth. In the interval Vendale had replenished the fire from the wood-
basket in his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the table a flask and cup
from his.

"Common cabaret brandy, I am afraid," he said, pouring out; "bought upon
the road, and not like yours from Cripple Corner. But yours is
exhausted; so much the worse. A cold night, a cold time of night, a cold
country, and a cold house. This may be better than nothing; try it."

Vendale took the cup, and did so.

"How do you find it?"

"It has a coarse after-flavour," said Vendale, giving back the cup with a
slight shudder, "and I don't like it."

"You are right," said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking his lips; "it
_has_ a coarse after-flavour, and _I_ don't like it. Booh! It burns,
though!" He had flung what remained in the cup upon the fire.

Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclined his head upon his
hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs. Obenreizer remained watchful
and still; but Vendale, after certain nervous twitches and starts, in one
of which he rose to his feet and looked wildly about him, fell into the
strangest confusion of dreams. He carried his papers in a leather case
or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of his buttoned
travelling-coat; and whatever he dreamed of, in the lethargy that got
possession of him, something importunate in those papers called him out
of that dream, though he could not wake from it. He was berated on the
steppes of Russia (some shadowy person gave that name to the place) with
Marguerite; and yet the sensation of a hand at his breast, softly feeling
the outline of the packet-book as he lay asleep before the fire, was
present to him. He was ship-wrecked in an open boat at sea, and having
lost his clothes, had no other covering than an old sail; and yet a
creeping hand, tracing outside all the other pockets of the dress he
actually wore, for papers, and finding none answer its touch, warned him
to rouse himself. He was in the ancient vault at Cripple Corner, to
which was transferred the very bed substantial and present in that very
room