For a while Oliver continued leaning out of the window, dazed, bewildered with what he had seen. Then he slowly drew his head in again, and with trembling limbs and quaking body crawled back to his blankets that lay in a heap upon the floor in the darkness. He heard a distant clock strike two; he would have given ten years of his life for a ray of good, honest sunlight.
"Did the cats annoy you last night?" said Oliver's mother, as they sat at breakfast.
"No," said the new uncle. Gaspard and he looked as if they had never opened their eyes the whole night through.
Oliver sat with the untasted breakfast before him, heavily burdened with the recollection of what he had seen. For one moment he woke to the question and answer, and wondered vaguely whether the little supper of the night before had given him the nightmare. Then his heart sank back, heavier than ever, for he knew that what he had seen he had seen with his waking eyes.
Suddenly the new uncle looked up. "We will start for Paris," said he, "at nine o'clock."
Oliver's heart thrilled at the words. It was on his tongue to say, "I do not want to go to Paris," but Gaspard's mouse-like eyes were fixed upon him, and he gulped, shuddered, and sat silent.
[Illustration: "HE SUDDENLY BEGAN AN UNCOUTH, GROTESQUE DANCE."]
It was all like the hideous unreality of a nightmare to poor Oliver. For twelve hours they had travelled on and on and on, Oliver and those two dreadful mysterious beings, with only a brief stop now and then to change horses, and now and then for a bite to eat. At such times that one whom Oliver afterwards knew as "the master," got out and walked up and down, while the other attended to his duties as servant. But Oliver always sat still, and shrunk together in the corner of the coach, weighed down with the tremendous remembrance of what had passed the night before, and by no less looming apprehensions of what was to come. Gaspard always brought him something to eat, but he had no appetite for the food, and he shuddered at the lean, grisly face whenever it appeared at the door of the coach.
Then again the master would enter, and they would resume the never-ending journey. At last, overpowered by the continued intensity of the strain, Oliver fell into an uneasy sleep, in which all manner of ugly visions flitted through his mind. At last the sudden thunderous rumbling of the coach over stony streets aroused him again, and when he awoke it was to find himself in Paris. He unclosed his eyes and looked stonily out of the window. He had fallen asleep while the sun was still quite high in the sky; now it was night. The lights from the street lanterns flashed in at the window, traversed the gloomy interior of the coach, and then flashed out again; a perpetual glare shone from the windows of shops and stores; hundreds of people, passing and repassing, came and went; but poor Oliver, bewildered and stupefied, saw and felt all as a part of those dull, leaden dreams that had disturbed him in his sleep.