I was tired out and soon fell asleep.
CHAPTER IV.
Daylight was beginning to tinge with bluish grey the only window in my
dungeon tower when I was roused out of my niche in the granite by the
prolonged distant notes of a hunting horn.
There is nothing more sad and melancholy than the wail of this instrument
when the day begins to struggle with the night--when not a sigh nor a
sound besides comes to molest the solitary reign of silence; it is
especially the last long note which spreads in widening waves over the
immensity of the plain beneath, awaking the distant, far-off echoes
amongst the mountains, that has in it a poetic element that stirs up the
depths of the soul.
Leaning upon my elbow in my bear-skin I lay listening to the plaintive
sound, which suggested something of the feudal ages. The contemplation of
my chamber, the ancient den of the Wolf of Nideck, with its low, dark
arch, threatening almost to come down to crush the occupant; and further
on that small leaden window, just touching the ceiling, more wide than
high, and deeply recessed in the wall, added to the reality of the
impression.
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