Finding these fancies intolerable at length, he shook himself wide awake, rose, and walked unsteadily up and down the car. In doing so, he perceived that his fellow-passenger had retreated to the last seat, and was, apparently, sleeping, his cap drawn low over his forehead. But Mr. Schöninger's glance detected a slight change in the position of the head as he commenced his promenade, and he could not divest himself of the belief that, from under the low hat-brim, a glance as sharp as his own was following his every movement.
In an ordinary and healthy mood of mind he would have cared little for such espionage; but he was not in such a mood. Circumstances had of late tried his nerves, and it required all his power of self-control to maintain a composed exterior. Did this man suspect his trouble, and search for, or, perhaps, divine, or, possibly, know the cause of it? He would gladly have caught the fellow in his arms, and thrown him headlong into the outer darkness.
He returned to his place, and, leaning close to the window, looked out into the night. If he had hoped to quiet himself by the sight of a familiar nature, he was disappointed, for the scene had a weird, though occasionally beautiful aspect, very unlike reality. The moon had set, leaving that darkness which follows a bright moonlight, or precedes the dawn of day, when the stars seem to be confounded by the near yet invisible radiance of their conqueror, and dare not shine with their own full lustre. Only this locomotive, dashing through the heart of the night, rendered visible a flying panorama. Groves of trees twirled round, surprised in some mystic dance; streams flashed out in all their windings, red and serpent-like, and hid themselves as suddenly; wide plains swam past, all a blur, with hills and mountains stumbling against the horizon. Only one spot had even a hint of familiarity. Framed round by a great semi-circle of woods, not many rods from the track, was a long, narrow pond, with a few acres of smooth green beyond it, and a white cottage close to its farthest shore. This little scene was as perfectly secluded, apparently, as if it had been in the midst of a continent otherwise uninhabited. No road nor neighboring house was visible from the railroad. The dwellers in that cottage seemed to be solitary and remote, knowing nothing of the wide, busy world save what they saw from their vine-draped windows when the long, noisy train, crowded with strangers, hurried past them, never stopping. What web that clattering shuttle wove they might wonder, but could not know, could scarcely care as they dreamed their lives away, lotos-eating. For the lotos was not wanting.