As these gradually yielded to the lenitive
power of time, I sought his conversation for the positive pleasure it
afforded, and at last it became the chief source of my happiness. Day after
day, and month after month, glided on in this gentle, unvarying current,
for more than three years; during which period he had occasionally thrown
out dark hints that the time would come when I should be restored to
liberty, and that he had an important secret, which he would one day
communicate. I should have been more tantalized with the expectations that
these remarks were calculated to raise, had I not suspected them to be a
good-natured artifice, to save me from despondency, as they were never made
except when he saw me looking serious and thoughtful.
CHAPTER II.
_The Brahmin's illness--He reveals an important secret to Atterley--
Curious information concerning the Moon--The Glonglims--They plan a
voyage to the Moon._
About this period, one afternoon in the month of March, when I repaired
to the hermitage as usual, I found my venerable friend stretched on his
humble pallet, breathing very quickly, and seemingly in great pain. He
was labouring under a pleurisy, which is not unfrequent in the mountainous
region, at this season. He told me that his disease had not yielded to
the ordinary remedies which he had tried when he first felt its approach,
and that he considered himself to be dangerously ill.
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