sleep this night was not destined to be blessed with so fair a vision; his thoughts incessantly ran upon the unpromising state of his affairs, and the little prospect there was of a union with his beloved. Tired of these vexatious and unprofitable reflections, he tried hard to lose himself in sleep, but found it impossible to succeed: he turned fidgetily from side to side—pulled his pillow, now up, now down—shut his eyes, opened them—said his prayers over and over again; and finding this last remedy inefficacious, made up his mind, though in extreme ill-humour, to lie awake all night. No sooner had he come to this conclusion, than he was startled by a noise which seemed to issue from the chimney of this deserted apartment in which he was so unsuccessfully courting repose.
He now banished as anxiously all thoughts of sleep as he had before endeavoured to encourage them, and, suddenly facing round towards the seat of the odd noise which had disturbed him, beheld, to his utter astonishment, a human hand fall down the chimney; to this succeeded a foot, then another hand, and then again another foot, and so quietly, by degrees, all the requisites for making up a human body, each attired according to its own proper mode of dressing: and these rolling together, and kindly uniting, there arose from the fragments a gigantic figure, who, with belt and partizan, huge mustaches and grim looks, mounted guard on one side of the fire-place.
This organizing process was suspended for a few seconds, and then began again, and a second halberdier deliberately stalked forward, and placed himself opposite to
