170 The Elders Journey. [FEB. 



tive, which promised the greatest ease to his already overburthened 

 limbs. Mr. Dick was both ; and he sat down on the road, just where his 

 short race had terminated, and drawing in his limbs to the body, and his 

 head into the neck mufflings from which it had partly emerged, he looked 

 like a huge tortoise sleeping in its shell. It must not be supposed, 

 however, that he was as much of the Christian hero as to be able to 

 maintain a perfect equilibrium of mind, in this alarming and extraordinary 

 situation. On the contrary, a thousand awful fears and fancies took 

 possession of him, turning topsy-turvy his best ideas, like a horde of 

 barbarians ransacking a well-ordered city. By and by he would not 

 have lifted an eye for a king's ransom ; and even as it was, with the 

 eyelids shut down, as if with screw-nails, and the organs of vision defended 

 from outward intrusion by successive ramparts of silk, and cotton, and 

 broadcloth, an obstinate acuteness of sight seemed to compel him to 

 behold every appalling object he had ever seen or fancied in his life. 

 The vision of the Temanite, and the apparition of Samuel, passed in 

 terrible review before him ; and these were strongly associated with the 

 local superstitions of his native place, the messenger of heaven being 

 marshalled by the ill man himself in the person of a blackamoor, and the 

 prophet of the Israelites, linking arm in arm with Meg Limmer, a 

 ne'er-do-weel who had haunted the Whin Hill both in life and death, as 

 far back as his recollection extended, for the purpose of way-laying the 

 male passenger. The failings too of the original seers seemed to mingle, 

 as it w r ere, with his own ; like Eliphaz, he felt the hairs of his flesh stand 

 up, and at the surprising conjunction of Samuel and Meg Limmer, like 

 Saul at Endor, he was so sore afraid that he fell straight-way all along 

 on the earth. His ears also were as busy as his eyes ; and so dreadful 

 were the supernatural sounds with which they were assailed, that it may 

 be a question whether they were not rather relieved than otherwise, by 

 a rushing noise on the road, like the coming of the wheels of a chariot, 

 which threatened instant destruction to the prostrate traveller. With 

 the instinct of self-preservation, however, he gathered himself up in a 

 twinkling on his hands and knees, and crawled backwards to the side of 

 the road ; but here his foot plashing unexpectedly in water, gave him 

 pause. He could not for some time withdraw the immersed member for 

 fear of the danger on the road, and as little did he like to tempt the 

 deceitful element further ; it might be a ditch, or it might be the sea, 

 and to one like him, who had an alacrity of sinking, either might be 

 fatal. Even although a ditch, indeed, as he said himself, who knoweth 

 but it might be as deep as the well Haran, as you go up to the city of 

 Nahor ? And thus, therefore, he lay, or rather stood, in the manner of 

 some amphibious quadruped, till the sound, which might have been the 

 rushing of a chariot, or of the wind, or of something more unsubstantial 

 than either, had passed by. And there he lay, in " an horror of great 

 darkness," alone, and in a solitary road, till his wearied senses found an 

 equivocal kind of repose in a troubled sleep. In his dreams, his enemy 

 in the spirit, Timothy, seemed to be standing over him, and taunting 

 him where he lay, while, enchanted and tongue-tied, yet bursting with 

 fiery indignation and wrath, he could not utter a word in reply. At 

 length, slowly returning to a waking sense of his dismal situation, his 

 outward faculties gradually resumed their functions, and as he recognized 

 the sound of human voices, and the approaching footsteps of men, the 

 bulky body of Ebenezer shrunk into half its natural compass. The 



