Absorbed in such reflections as these, longing to depart, yet determined
to remain, he impatiently awaited Goisvintha's approach, until the
rising of the storm with its mysterious and all-engrossing train of
events forced his thoughts and actions into a new channel. When,
however, his interviews with the stranger and the Gothic king were past,
and he had returned as he had been bidden to his appointed sojourn in
the camp, his old anxieties, displaced but not destroyed, resumed their
influence over him. He demanded eagerly of his comrades if Goisvintha
had arrived in his absence, and received the same answer in the negative
from each.
As he now listened to the melancholy rising of the wind and the
increasing loudness of the thunder, to the shrill cries of the distant
night-birds hurrying to shelter, emotions of mournfulness and awe
possessed themselves of his heart. He now wondered that any events,
however startling, however appalling, should have had the power to turn
his mind for a moment from the dreary contemplations that had engaged it
at the close of day.
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