This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII. TO NAHANT? It was about three in the morning. The lights had been extinguished in the ball-room, and the house was still. The casements of sleeping-rooms were darkening one by one as their inmates composed themselves to rest. A footfall on the gallery outside mingled with the tick of the clock on the staircase, which, in the stillness of the hour, sent monotonous vibrations through the timbers of the wooden house. Backward and forward the walker paced, diffusing the thin smoke of his cigar upon the salt-smelling air. It was cool and even chilly as morning drew near. Already the sky had grown pale low down beyond the sea. The waters by contrast had grown more black and forbidding; and with the regular steady growl of the rollers breaking on the beach, it seemed like a monster watching at the portals of the day. Backward and forth paced Joseph Naylor, too wakeful to sleep, and without even a wish to turn in. There was nothing painful in his ruminations, nothing to agitate; and no point of difficulty had arisen on which it was necessary for him to decide. Looking at himself in that state of divided consciousness in which one half the mind notes and surveys the workings of the other, he appeared scarcely to think at all. There was little of sequence or progress in the images among which he drifted, and the faculties of judging, choosing, desiring, intending, were not in use. There was rather a feeling of contented fruition overhanging his spirit like a golden mist, in which he seemed to bathe and be at rest. Far back, before he had learned sorrow, he had known this sense of peace, a glimpse of Vol. I. L Paradise from which he had been snatched away, and the gates closed after him with a clang. Looking seaward, the black expanse spread out, with l...