After that, the sound of inquisitional voices seemed merged into one dreamy indeterminate hum.
IMPIA TORTORUM LONGOS HIS TURBA FURORES SANGUINIS INNOCUI, NON SATIATA, ALUIT. SOSPITE NUNC PATRIA, FRACTO NUNC FUNERIS ANTRO, MORS UBI DIRA FUIT VITA SALUSQUE PATENT.
I was sick...Sick unto death with that long agony...
When they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit I felt that my senses were leaving me, the sentence that dread sentence of death was the last distinct accntuation which reached my ears.
I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white and thin even to grotesqueness, thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness of immovable resolution of stern contempt for human torture.
It conveyed to my soul the idea of revoultion perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a breif period; for presently I heard no more
VERY SUDDENLY There came back to my soul motion and sound of the tumultuous beating of my heart and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, motion, and touch a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought a condition that lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state, then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon, at length, with a wild desperation at heart, I QUICKLY UNLCOSED MY EYES.
I felt nothing; yet I dreaded to move a step......Lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB.
The blackness of eternal night emcompassed me! I struggled for breath.
The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress me and stifle me. I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre.