"What have I done!" he said, confusedly. "What am I going to do!"

"To be the benefactor of mankind," he thought he heard a voice
reply.

He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage now
shutting out the little parlour from his view, he went on,
directing his eyes before him at the way he went.

"It is only since last night," he muttered gloomily, "that I have
remained shut up, and yet all things are strange to me. I am
strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest have I
in this place, or in any place that I can bring to my remembrance?
My mind is going blind!"

There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being invited,
by a voice within, to enter, he complied.

"Is that my kind nurse?" said the voice. "But I need not ask her.
There is no one else to come here."

It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted his
attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the
chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre scanty
stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man's cheeks, and bricked
into the centre of a hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained
the fire, to which his face was turned. Being so near the windy
house-top, it wasted quickly, and with a busy sound, and the
burning ashes dropped down fast.