There was another sleeper, also, in the mill whom Faith knew nothing of.
Michael Garvin, the night watchman--the same whose child had been ill the night before--when Faith came out into the loom chamber, had left it but a few minutes, going his silent round within the building, and recording his faithfulness by the half-hour pin upon the watch clock. Six times he had done this, already. It was half past ten.
He had gone up, now, by the stairs from the weaving room, into the third story. These stairs ascended at the front, from within the chamber.
Michael Garvin went on nearly to the end of the room above--stopped, and looked out at a window. All still, all safe apparently.
He was very tired. What harm in lying down somewhere in a corner, for five minutes? He need not shut his eyes. He rolled his coat up for a pillow, and threw it against the wall beneath the window. The next instant he had stretched his stalwart limbs along the floor, and before ten minutes of his seventh half hour were spent--long before Faith, who thought herself all alone in the great building, had lost consciousness of her strange position--he was fast asleep.
So, since the days of the disciples, men have grown heavy and forgotten their trust. So they have slumbered upon decks, at sea. So sentinels have lain down at picket posts, though they knew the purchase of that hour of rest might be the leaden death!
She thought herself wandering, at night, through the deserted streets of a great city. She seemed to have come from somewhere afar off, and to have no place to go to.
Up and down, through avenues sometimes half familiar, sometimes wholly unknown, she went wearily, without aim, or end, or hope. "Tired! tired! tired!" she seemed to say to herself. "Nowhere to rest--nobody to take care of me!"
Then--city, streets, and houses disappeared; the scenery of her dream rolled away, and opened out, and she was standing on a high, bare cliff, away up in wintry air; threatening rocky avalanches overhanging her--chill winds piercing her--and no pathway visible downward. Still crying out in loneliness and fear. Still with none to comfort or to help.
Standing on the sheer edge of the precipice--behind her, suddenly, a crater opened. A hissing breath came up, and the chill air quivered and scorched about her. Her feet were upon a volcano! A lake of boiling, molten stone heaved--huge, brazen, bubbling--spreading wider and wider, like a great earth ulcer, eating in its own brink continually. Up in the air over her, reared a vast, sulphurous canopy of smoke. The narrowing ridge beneath her feet burned--trembled. She hovered between two destructions.