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+Project Gutenberg's In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3
+
+Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37172]
+Last updated: April 22, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN A GLASS DARKLY, V. 1/3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+IN A GLASS DARKLY.
+
+BY
+
+J. SHERIDAN LE FANU,
+
+AUTHOR OF "UNCLE SILAS," &C.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+R. BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+1872.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+BRINSLEY HOMAN, ESQ.
+
+THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED,
+
+WITH MUCH AFFECTION,
+
+BY HIS OLD FRIEND
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+In a Glass Darkly.
+
+
+GREEN TEA.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+MARTIN HESSELIUS, THE GERMAN PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never
+practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest
+me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the
+honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
+trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me
+the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss
+of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom
+been twelve months together in the same place.
+
+In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a
+wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in
+his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,
+and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at
+least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was
+an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
+
+In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,
+his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a
+young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood
+the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was
+well-founded.
+
+For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense
+collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and
+bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two
+distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an
+intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had
+seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day,
+or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns
+upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art, and with all the force
+and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis
+and illustration.
+
+Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay
+reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it
+may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of
+language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The
+narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes
+of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years
+ago.
+
+It is related in a series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of
+Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who
+read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written
+a play.
+
+The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical
+record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an
+unlearned reader.
+
+These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned
+on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are
+written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in
+German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful
+translator, and although here and there, I omit some passages, and
+shorten others and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DR. HESSELIUS RELATES HOW HE MET THE REV. MR. JENNINGS.
+
+
+The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses
+with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a
+little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being
+handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also
+shy.
+
+I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty and
+benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but
+a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation. He
+seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk;
+but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great
+favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems, consults him upon many things,
+and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows
+she about him.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say, sixty thousand
+pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be
+actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always
+tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in
+Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling his
+health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
+
+There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in,
+generally a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of
+officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart,
+it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or
+oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a
+sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to
+resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and
+eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange
+shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room,
+leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This
+occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis, now,
+he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to
+supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly
+incapacitated.
+
+When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the
+vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly,
+he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always
+perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of
+course. We shall see.
+
+Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentleman-like man. People, however, remark
+something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing
+which certainly contributes to it, people I think don't remember; or,
+perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings
+has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed
+the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It
+occurs only now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as
+I have said to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the
+floor there is something both shy and anxious.
+
+A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating
+theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched
+and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely
+more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls
+insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere,
+and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every
+subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding
+inquiry.
+
+There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but
+reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable
+little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set
+down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly
+scientific paper.
+
+I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I
+hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more
+comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant.
+I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of
+that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I
+believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an
+organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we
+ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the
+material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death
+consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply
+his extrication from the natural body--a process which commences at the
+moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a
+few days later, is the resurrection "in power."
+
+The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably
+see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by
+no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the
+consequences of this too generally unrecognised state of facts.
+
+In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with
+all my caution--I think he perceived it--and I saw plainly that he was
+as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my
+name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and
+then became thoughtful for a few minutes.
+
+After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the
+room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I
+thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting
+with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the
+subject of a distant inquiry and answer.
+
+This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by: and in a little time we had
+got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books
+and places, having travelled, wish to converse, it is very strange if
+they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me,
+and led him into conversation. He knew German, and had read my Essays on
+Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say.
+
+This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading,
+who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I
+already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were
+carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the
+world, but his best beloved friends--was cautiously weighing in his own
+mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me.
+
+I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful
+to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my
+suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans
+respecting myself.
+
+We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time; but at last he said:
+
+"I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon
+what you term Metaphysical Medicine--I read them in German, ten or
+twelve years ago--have they been translated?"
+
+"No, I'm sure they have not--I should have heard. They would have asked
+my leave, I think."
+
+"I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me
+in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print."
+
+"So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author
+to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although," I added,
+laughing, "ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed
+without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again
+in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest
+in it."
+
+At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden
+embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a
+young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his
+hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said,
+guiltily for a moment.
+
+I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to
+observe it, and going straight on, I said: "Those revivals of interest
+in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests another, and often
+sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But
+if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to
+provide you; I have still got two or three by me--and if you allow me to
+present one I shall be very much honoured."
+
+"You are very good indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a
+moment: "I almost despaired--I don't know how to thank you."
+
+"Pray don't say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am
+only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall
+throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty."
+
+Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and
+after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his
+departure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE DOCTOR QUESTIONS LADY MARY, AND SHE ANSWERS.
+
+
+"I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary," said I, so soon as he was gone.
+"He has read, travelled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought
+to be an accomplished companion."
+
+"So he is, and, better still, he is a really good man," said she. "His
+advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at
+Dawlbridge, and he's so painstaking, he takes so much trouble--you have
+no idea--wherever he thinks he can be of use: he's so good-natured and
+so sensible."
+
+"It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I
+can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in
+addition to what you have told me, I think I can tell you two or three
+things about him," said I.
+
+"Really!"
+
+"Yes, to begin with, he's unmarried."
+
+"Yes, that's right,--go on."
+
+"He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years
+perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some
+rather abstract subject--perhaps theology."
+
+"Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I'm not quite sure what it was
+about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for, very likely you
+are right, and he certainly did stop--yes."
+
+"And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes
+tea, at least, did like it, extravagantly."
+
+"Yes, that's _quite_ true."
+
+"He drank green tea, a good deal, didn't he?" I pursued.
+
+"Well, that's very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost
+to quarrel."
+
+"But he has quite given that up," said I.
+
+"So he has."
+
+"And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?"
+
+"Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near
+Dawlbridge. We knew them very well," she answered.
+
+"Well, either his mother or his father--I should rather think his
+father, saw a ghost," said I.
+
+"Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius."
+
+"Conjurer or no, haven't I said right?" I answered merrily.
+
+"You certainly have, and it was his father: he was a silent, whimsical
+man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told
+him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd
+story it was. I remember it particularly, because I was so afraid of
+him. This story was long before he died--when I was quite a child--and
+his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in, sometimes,
+in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawing-room, and I used to fancy
+there were ghosts about him."
+
+I smiled and nodded.
+
+"And now having established my character as a conjurer I think I must
+say good-night," said I.
+
+"But how _did_ you find it out?"
+
+"By the planets of course, as the gipsies do," I answered, and so,
+gaily, we said good-night.
+
+Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a
+note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that
+he had called, at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was
+at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me.
+
+Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me "professionally," as
+they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is
+supported by Lady Mary's answers to my parting questions. I should like
+much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with
+good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he
+meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shan't make myself
+difficult of access; I mean to return his visit to-morrow. It will be
+only civil in return for his politeness, to ask to see him. Perhaps
+something may come of it. Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van
+L., you shall hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DR. HESSELIUS PICKS UP SOMETHING IN LATIN BOOKS.
+
+
+Well, I have called at Blank-street.
+
+On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was
+engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his
+parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege and to call
+again, I merely intimated that I should try another time, and had turned
+to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a
+little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do,
+whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said,
+"Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings,
+for I am sure he wishes to see you."
+
+The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings,
+asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back
+drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes.
+
+This was really a study--almost a library. The room was lofty, with two
+tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I
+had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the
+ceiling. The upper carpet--for to my tread it felt that there were two
+or three--was a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The book-cases
+standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep
+recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable,
+and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost
+oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for
+association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I
+stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a
+peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for
+except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were
+everywhere, helped this sombre feeling.
+
+While awaiting Mr. Jennings' arrival, I amused myself by looking into
+some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these,
+but immediately under them, with their backs upward, on the floor, I
+lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg's Arcana Cælestia, in the
+original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which
+theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges.
+There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and
+placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where
+these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a
+series of sentences indicated by a pencilled line at the margin. Of
+these I copy here a few, translating them into English.
+
+"When man's interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then
+there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made
+visible to the bodily sight."...
+
+"By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are
+in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world.
+From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists
+from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so
+on."...
+
+"There are with every man at least two evil spirits."...
+
+"With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating.
+There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the
+dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping
+along within it."...
+
+"The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed, from the hells, but
+when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The
+place where they then are is in the midst between heaven and hell, and
+is called the world of spirits--when the evil spirits who are with man,
+are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every
+thought and affection of the man, and so, in all that the man himself
+enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their
+former state."...
+
+"If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and
+yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in
+into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to
+destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred."...
+
+"Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually
+striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to
+the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the
+life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by
+the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living
+consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith."...
+
+"Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate
+spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it
+they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him."...
+
+"The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal
+ruin."
+
+A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings'
+neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his
+criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was
+something quite different, and began with these words, _Deus misereatur
+mei_--"May God compassionate me." Thus warned of its private nature, I
+averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had
+found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men
+studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to
+take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was.
+
+I was reading some pages which refer to "representatives" and
+"correspondents," in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had
+arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits,
+when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, present
+themselves, by "correspondence," in the shape of the beast (_fera_)
+which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and
+atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those
+bestial forms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FOUR EYES WERE READING THE PASSAGE.
+
+
+I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it,
+and something caused me to raise my eyes.
+
+Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I
+saw reflected the tall shape of my friend Mr. Jennings leaning over my
+shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so
+dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.
+
+I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a
+little, saying:
+
+"I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking
+you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very
+impertinently, I'm afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your
+first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg,
+no doubt, long ago?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces
+of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so
+good as to remember."
+
+Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush
+in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed.
+
+"I'm scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I've only
+had them a fortnight," he answered, "and I think they are rather likely
+to make a solitary man nervous--that is, judging from the very little I
+have read--I don't say that they have made me so," he laughed; "and I'm
+so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?"
+
+I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers.
+
+"I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours," he
+continued. "I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded. Do
+you know Dr. Harley?" he asked, rather abruptly.
+
+In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of
+the most eminent who had ever practised in England.
+
+I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great
+courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.
+
+"I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,"
+said Mr. Jennings.
+
+This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of
+anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.
+
+"Really! and in what way?" I asked.
+
+"In his profession," he answered.
+
+I smiled.
+
+"I mean this," he said: "he seems to me, one half, blind--I mean one
+half of all he looks at is dark--preternaturally bright and vivid all
+the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems _wilful_. I can't get him--I
+mean he won't--I've had some experience of him as a physician, but I
+look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an
+intellect half dead, I'll tell you--I know I shall some time--all about
+it," he said, with a little agitation. "You stay some months longer in
+England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time,
+would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?"
+
+"I should be only too happy," I assured him.
+
+"Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley."
+
+"A little leaning to the materialistic school," I said.
+
+"A _mere_ materialist," he corrected me; "you can't think how that sort
+of thing worries one who knows better. You won't tell any one--any of my
+friends you know--that I am hippish; now, for instance, no one
+knows--not even Lady Mary--that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other
+doctor. So pray don't mention it; and, if I should have any threatening
+of an attack, you'll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have
+a little talk with you."
+
+I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes
+gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said:
+
+"I see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a
+conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the
+rest of your life, you will never hit on it."
+
+He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud
+suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men
+do in pain.
+
+"Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any
+of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you
+that your confidence is sacred."
+
+He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful
+way and after a little time, I took my leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DOCTOR HESSELIUS IS SUMMONED TO RICHMOND.
+
+
+We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are
+certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit--the human
+face--which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor's
+nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me.
+It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my
+plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a
+change of ideas.
+
+I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his
+hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had
+been for some little time so much better--quite well, in fact--that he
+was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to
+his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up.
+There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude for his
+restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.
+
+A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had
+announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having
+resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, "I begin to think
+that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the
+matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy
+there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and
+he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did
+not come back for a year."
+
+Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this
+note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:
+
+"Dear Sir.--I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able
+to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present I am too
+low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray don't
+mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. By-and-by, please God,
+you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some
+of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily
+than I can now write."
+
+About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last
+person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for
+the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from
+Mr. Jennings' niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be
+gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In
+those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of
+suffering is sometimes hidden!
+
+Nearly five weeks passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At
+the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote:
+
+"I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of
+scene, change of faces, change of everything and in everything--but
+_myself_. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature
+on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements
+will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but,
+pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I
+have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage
+to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea. You shall have no
+trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank street, who takes this
+note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am
+always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. I have
+tried everything. Come and see."
+
+I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening,
+which accordingly I did.
+
+He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought,
+as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very
+old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which
+over-topped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for
+nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found,
+belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding
+it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because
+being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of
+selection, by coming here.
+
+The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky
+illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all
+familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back
+drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same
+dusky light.
+
+I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in
+the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The
+corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the
+gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was
+sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place.
+The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure
+of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet
+stealthy steps, into the room.
+
+We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still
+light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down beside
+me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface
+began his narrative.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HOW MR. JENNINGS MET HIS COMPANION.
+
+
+The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of
+Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on
+the stony face or the sufferer--for the character of his face, though
+still gentle and sweet, was changed--rested that dim, odd glow which
+seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though
+faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The
+silence, too, was utter; not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from
+without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's
+house.
+
+I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of
+the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of
+suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of
+Schalken's, before its background of darkness.
+
+"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven
+weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is
+torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.
+
+"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much
+thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the
+ancients."
+
+"I know," said I; "the actual religion of educated and thinking
+paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting
+field."
+
+"Yes; but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism
+is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their
+religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is
+a degrading fascination and the nemesis sure. God forgive me!
+
+"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on
+the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly
+infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected
+with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself
+delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care."
+
+He sighed heavily.
+
+"I believe that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his
+work, as a friend of mine phrased it, _on_ something--tea, or coffee, or
+tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly
+supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted,
+and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded
+often of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the
+want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion--at first the ordinary
+black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good
+deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an
+uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I
+found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of
+thought so. I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one
+might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so
+quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a
+habit with me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work
+proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp,
+and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three
+in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every
+day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a
+library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I
+was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty
+much as usual, and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence
+had never been, I think, so pleasant before.
+
+"I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in
+mediæval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them.
+This obliging person's books were in the City, a very out-of-the-way
+part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and, on coming
+out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which
+used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the
+'bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars
+at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got
+out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in
+my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.
+
+"The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the
+corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses,
+two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light.
+They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small
+brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began
+to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From
+what centre did that faint but deep red light come, and from what--glass
+beads, buttons, toy decorations--was it reflected? We were lumbering
+along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the
+puzzle, and it became in another minute more odd, for these two
+luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer the floor, keeping
+still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as
+suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting, and
+I saw them no more.
+
+"My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I
+saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again
+they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them.
+
+"So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards
+the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red.
+
+"There was very little light in the 'bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned
+forward to aid my endeavour to discover what these little circles really
+were. They shifted their position a little as I did so. I began now to
+perceive an outline of something black, and I soon saw with tolerable
+distinctness the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face
+forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly
+saw its teeth grinning at me.
+
+"I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. I
+fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing
+to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my
+fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained
+immovable--up to it--_through_ it! For through it, and back and forward,
+it passed, without the slightest resistance.
+
+"I can't, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt.
+When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then
+supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that
+fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute
+for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into
+the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my
+head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the
+lights and trees we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of
+reality.
+
+"I stopped the 'bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as
+I paid him. I daresay there was something unusual in my looks and
+manner, for I had never felt so strangely before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE JOURNEY: FIRST STAGE.
+
+
+"When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked
+carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my
+indescribable relief I saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a
+shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding
+myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it.
+
+"I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three
+hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the
+wall is a hedge of yew or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within
+that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you
+came.
+
+"This brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise
+my eyes I saw the monkey, with that stooping gait, on all fours, walking
+or creeping, close beside me on top of the wall. I stopped looking at it
+with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up
+on the wall with its long hands on its knees looking at me. There was
+not light enough to see it much more than in outline, nor was it dark
+enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I
+still saw, however, that red foggy light plainly enough. It did not show
+its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and
+sulky, and was observing me steadily.
+
+"I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil,
+and there I stood, still looking at it, it did not move.
+
+"With an instinctive determination to try something--anything, I turned
+about and walked briskly towards town with a skance look, all the time,
+watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall, at
+exactly my pace.
+
+"Where the wall ends, near the turn of the road, it came down and with a
+wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to
+keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so
+close to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it.
+
+"The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment.
+I stopped dismayed and bewildered, turning as I did so, the other way--I
+mean, towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I
+stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about
+five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me.
+
+"I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as
+every one has, something about 'spectral illusions,' as you physicians
+term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation, and looked
+my misfortune in the face.
+
+"These affections, I had read, are sometimes transitory and sometimes
+obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance, at first
+harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and
+insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still as I stood
+there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort
+myself by repeating again and again the assurance, 'the thing is purely
+disease, a well-known physical affection, as distinctly as small-pox or
+neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it.
+I must not be a fool. I've been sitting up too late, and I daresay my
+digestion is quite wrong, and with God's help, I shall be all right, and
+this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia.' Did I believe all this? Not
+one word of it, no more than any other miserable being ever did who is
+once seized and riveted in this satanic captivity. Against my
+convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into
+a false courage.
+
+"I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had
+forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the
+sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune.
+
+"I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved close
+beside me, and I fancied there was the sort of anxious drawing toward
+the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs, sometimes as they
+come toward home.
+
+"I was afraid to go into town, I was afraid of any one's seeing and
+recognising me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my
+manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as
+going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue
+myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when
+the door was opened entered with me.
+
+"I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandy-and-water. My
+idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a
+while in sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it it
+were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawing-room. I sat just
+here. The monkey then got upon a small table that then stood _there_. It
+looked dazed and languid. An irrepressible uneasiness as to its
+movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I
+could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations,
+at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes.
+
+"I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I
+shall describe, rather, the phenomena of the first year, which never
+varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in
+daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are
+peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It had only one
+peculiarity--a character of malignity--unfathomable malignity. During
+the first year it looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense
+malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During
+all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as
+was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me, I have
+never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or
+night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at
+a time, unaccountably.
+
+"In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its
+eyes. It is _all_ visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of
+red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements.
+
+"When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and
+in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then
+advances towards me, grinning and shaking its paws clenched, and, at the
+same time, there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have
+any fire. I can't sleep in the room where there is any, and it draws
+nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and
+when its fury rises to the highest pitch, it springs into the grate, and
+up the chimney, and I see it no more.
+
+"When first this happened I thought I was released. I was a new man. A
+day passed--a night--and no return, and a blessed week--a week--another
+week. I was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and
+praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with
+me again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE SECOND STAGE.
+
+
+"It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen
+exterior, was now active. It was perfectly unchanged in every other
+respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and
+soon in other ways.
+
+"For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an
+increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it was always brooding
+over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me."
+
+"Is it here now?" I asked.
+
+"No," he replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a
+day--fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two
+months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although
+it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it
+last, it may return now at any moment."
+
+"Is its return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"
+
+"Nothing--no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes
+from a book, or turning my head, I see it as usual, looking at me, and
+then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so
+much and so minutely before to any one."
+
+I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he
+repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he
+might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the
+morning, but he said:
+
+"No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I
+should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had
+nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give
+spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real--"
+
+He paused, looking at me with agitated inquiry.
+
+"We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I
+think," I answered, after an interval.
+
+"Well--very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing,
+little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic
+nerves, he talked of. Ah! well--there are other nerves of communication.
+May God Almighty help me! You shall hear.
+
+"Its power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a
+way aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending
+between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish
+in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not
+prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have
+apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so, is this--"
+
+He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance,
+and sighed often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time
+his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient,
+who has given himself up.
+
+"Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis, my parish.
+
+"It was with me when I left this place for Dawlbridge. It was my silent
+travelling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I
+entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The
+thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me
+in the church--in the reading-desk--in the pulpit--within the communion
+rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to
+the congregation, it would spring upon the open book and squat there, so
+that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once.
+
+"I left Dawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I
+did everything he told me. He gave my case a great deal of thought. It
+interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly three months I
+was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his
+full assent I returned to Dawlbridge.
+
+"I travelled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more--I was happy
+and grateful. I was returning, as I thought delivered from a dreadful
+hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It
+was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful,
+and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the
+spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has
+the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that
+bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it
+emerges at the road-side, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As
+we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner
+of the chaise was the monkey.
+
+"For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror.
+I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the road-side, and
+prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened.
+My companion was with me as I re-entered the vicarage. The same
+persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I
+left the place.
+
+"I told you," he said, "that the beast has before this become in certain
+ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by
+intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even
+meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You
+will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was
+thus, whenever I meditated praying; it was always before me, and nearer
+and nearer.
+
+"It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the
+chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at
+me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to
+dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony,
+till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to
+nothing--and unless I had started up, and shook off the catalepsy I
+have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself. There are
+other ways," he sighed heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with
+my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is
+not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my
+lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me,
+and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known
+this, you would be acquainted with desperation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE THIRD STAGE.
+
+
+"I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I
+need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you.
+They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the
+organ of sight was the only point assailable by the influences that have
+fastened upon me--I know better. For two years in my direful case that
+limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and
+then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in
+a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so
+the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the
+finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery
+of hell, until he is as I am. Yes, Doctor, as _I_ am, for while I talk
+to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible,
+and my pleading with the inexorable."
+
+I endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation, and told him
+that he must not despair.
+
+While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moonlight was wide
+over the scene which the window commanded, and I said:
+
+"Perhaps you would prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd.
+I should wish you, as much as possible, under your usual conditions
+while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it--otherwise I don't care."
+
+"All lights are the same to me," he said: "except when I read or write,
+I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened
+about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me."
+
+"Speak! How do you mean--speak as a man does, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes; speak in words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence
+and articulation; but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of
+a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me--it comes like a
+singing through my head.
+
+"This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't
+let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go
+on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers of
+man avail me nothing!"
+
+"You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with
+unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine yourself strictly to the
+narrative of _facts_; and recollect, above all, that even if the thing
+that infests you be as you seem to suppose, a reality with an actual
+independent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless
+it be given from above: its access to your senses depends mainly upon
+your physical condition--this is, under God, your comfort and reliance:
+we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the
+'_paries_,' the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of
+repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new
+course, sir--be encouraged. I'll give to-night to the careful
+consideration of the whole case."
+
+"You are very good, sir; you think it worth trying, you don't give me
+quite up; but, sir, you don't know, it is gaining such an influence
+over me: it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and I'm growing so
+helpless. May God deliver me!"
+
+"It orders you about--of course you mean by speech?"
+
+"Yes, yes; it is always urging me to crimes, to injure others, or
+myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is urgent, it is indeed. When I
+was in Shropshire, a few weeks ago" (Mr. Jennings was speaking rapidly
+and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand, and looking in my
+face), "I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk: my
+persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the
+rest: the country near the Dee, you know, is beautiful. Our path
+happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a
+perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece
+had remained behind with me--she knows, of course, nothing of the
+nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill, and was
+low, and she remained to prevent my being quite alone. As we loitered
+slowly on together the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw
+myself down the shaft. I tell you now--oh, sir, think of it!--the one
+consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest
+the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor
+girl. I asked her to go on and take her walk with her friends, saying
+that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I urged her
+the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. I suppose
+there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her; but she
+would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a
+living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan," he said, with a
+ghastly groan and a shudder.
+
+There was a pause here, and I said, "You were preserved nevertheless. It
+was the act of God. You are in his hands and in the power of no other
+being: be therefore confident for the future."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+HOME.
+
+
+I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and
+inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness
+strictly as one dependent on physical, though _subtle_ physical, causes.
+I told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the
+deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with
+pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that
+he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a
+conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only
+so, but more contrary to facts, as disclosed in his mysterious
+deliverance from that murderous influence during his Shropshire
+excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his
+intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused
+into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful
+suggestion in her presence.
+
+As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed
+comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at
+any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my
+assurance that I would give neither time nor thought to any other
+subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that to-morrow
+he should hear the result, I took my leave.
+
+Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was
+far from well, and that he should make a point of frequently looking
+into his room.
+
+My own arrangements I made with a view to being quite secure from
+interruption.
+
+I merely called at my lodgings, and with a travelling-desk and
+carpet-bag, set off in a hackney-carriage for an inn about two miles out
+of town, called The Horns, a very quiet and comfortable house, with good
+thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion
+or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable
+sitting-room, to Mr. Jennings' case, and so much of the morning as it
+might require.
+
+(There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius' opinion upon the
+case and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It
+is curious--some persons would say mystical. But on the whole I doubt
+whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely
+to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was
+plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion.
+The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.)
+
+I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and
+did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this afternoon. I
+found a letter in Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It had not come by
+post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought
+it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no
+one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said
+that his orders from his master were that he was not to return without
+an answer.
+
+I opened the letter, and read:
+
+
+"Dear Dr. Hesselius. It is here. You had not been an hour gone when it
+returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows
+everything--it knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I
+send you this. It knows every word I have written--I write. This I
+promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very confused, very
+incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed.
+
+      "Ever yours, sincerely yours,
+
+          "ROBERT LYNDER JENNINGS."
+
+
+"When did this come?" I asked.
+
+"About eleven last night: the man was here again, and has been here
+three times to-day. The last time is about an hour since."
+
+Thus answered, and with the notes I had made upon his case in my pocket,
+I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings.
+
+I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had
+himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the
+principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which
+governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was
+profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the
+"enemy" was actually present.
+
+I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The
+door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She
+looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my
+question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending
+her hand towards two men who were coming down-stairs; and thus having,
+as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a side-door
+hastily and shut it.
+
+The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now
+close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered
+with blood.
+
+I drew back a little, and the man passing down-stairs merely said in a
+low tone, "Here's the servant, sir."
+
+The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me.
+He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood.
+
+"Jones, what is it, what has happened?" I asked, while a sickening
+suspicion overpowered me.
+
+The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment,
+and frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror
+which I already half guessed.
+
+His master had made away with himself.
+
+I went upstairs with him to the room--what I saw there I won't tell you.
+He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two
+men had laid him on the bed and composed his limbs. It had happened as
+the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance
+between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a
+carpet under his dressing-table, but none on the rest of the floor, for
+the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre,
+and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was
+slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful
+floor.
+
+I beckoned to the servant and we went down-stairs together. I turned off
+the hall into an old-fashioned pannelled room, and there standing, I
+heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal.
+
+"I concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last
+night, that you thought my master seriously ill. I thought it might be
+that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close to
+your directions. He sat up late, till past three o'clock. He was not
+writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to himself, but that was
+nothing unusual. At about that hour I assisted him to undress, and left
+him in his slippers and dressing-gown. I went back softly in about half
+an hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles
+lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow and
+looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if
+he wanted anything, and he said no.
+
+"I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or something a
+little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him
+last night.
+
+"In another half hour, or it might be a little more, I went up again. I
+did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The
+candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and
+I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him
+sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table with his clothes on
+again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should
+get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way.
+But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, no,
+rather sharp, I thought. I asked if I might light the candles, and he
+said, 'Do as you like, Jones,' So I lighted them, and I lingered about
+the room, and he said, 'Tell me truth, Jones, why did you come
+again--you did not hear any one cursing?' 'No, sir,' I said, wondering
+what he could mean.
+
+"'No,' said he, after me, 'of course, no;' and I said to him, 'Wouldn't
+it be well, sir, you went to bed? It's just five o'clock;' and he said
+nothing but, 'Very likely; good-night, Jones.' So I went, sir, but in
+less than hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and
+called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired
+me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must
+have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still
+fast, and he made no answer, so I did not like to disturb him, and
+thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring
+when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him.
+I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while,
+supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock
+I grew really uncomfortable about him--for at the latest he was never,
+that I could remember, later than half-past ten. I got no answer. I
+knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the
+door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and
+found him in the shocking way you saw."
+
+Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very
+kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was
+very much moved.
+
+So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its
+dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write
+to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and
+monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and
+horror. Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a
+poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and
+nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions
+of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange
+bed-fellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+A WORD FOR THOSE WHO SUFFER.
+
+
+My dear Van L----, you have suffered from an affection similar to that
+which I have just described. You twice complained of a return of it.
+
+Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me
+rather adopt the more emphasised piety of a certain good old French
+surgeon of three hundred years ago: "I treated, and God cured you."
+
+Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact.
+
+I have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of
+this kind of vision, which I term indifferently "sublimated,"
+"precocious," and "interior."
+
+There is another class of affections which are truly termed--though
+commonly confounded with those which I describe--spectral illusions.
+These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in
+the head or a trifling dyspepsia.
+
+It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude
+of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor
+less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance.
+
+There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly
+reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the
+physician. With these simple conditions, I look upon the cure as
+absolutely certain.
+
+You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings'
+case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in
+eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some
+cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every
+intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task,
+will effect a cure.
+
+You know my tract on The Cardinal Functions of the Brain. I there, by
+the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high
+probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its mechanism,
+through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the
+heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves,
+returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that
+fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as I before
+remarked, light or electricity are so.
+
+By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green
+tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more
+frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we
+have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain
+or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly
+exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus
+more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and
+the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather
+the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior
+vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the
+eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the
+simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, however, can be
+treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts
+powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it
+will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness,
+and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis.
+
+I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first
+dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had
+inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens,
+and entirely shut up again when the over-action of the cerebral heart,
+and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by
+a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon
+the body, by a simple process, that this result is produced--and
+inevitably produced--I have never yet failed.
+
+Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the
+result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected
+itself upon that disease which was established. His case was in the
+distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he
+really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I
+cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his
+case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and
+unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side
+of the disease, his cure is certain.
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILIAR.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+Out of about two hundred and thirty cases, more or less nearly akin to
+that I have entitled "Green Tea," I select the following, which I call
+"The Familiar."
+
+To this MS. Doctor Hesselius, has, after his wont, attached some sheets
+of letter-paper, on which are written, in his hand nearly as compact as
+print, his own remarks upon the case. He says--
+
+"In point of conscience, no more unexceptionable narrator, than the
+venerable Irish Clergyman who has given me this paper, on Mr. Barton's
+case, could have been chosen. The statement is, however, medically
+imperfect. The report of an intelligent physician, who had marked its
+progress, and attended the patient, from its earlier stages to its
+close, would have supplied what is wanting to enable me to pronounce
+with confidence. I should have been acquainted with Mr. Barton's
+probable hereditary pre-dispositions; I should have known, possibly, by
+very early indications, something of a remoter origin of the disease
+than can now be ascertained.
+
+"In a rough way, we may reduce all similar cases to three distinct
+classes. They are founded on the primary distinction between the
+subjective and the objective. Of those whose senses are alleged to be
+subject to supernatural impressions--some are simply visionaries, and
+propagate the illusions of which they complain, from diseased brain or
+nerves. Others are, unquestionably, infested by, as we term them,
+spiritual agencies, exterior to themselves. Others, again, owe their
+sufferings to a mixed condition. The interior sense, it is true, is
+opened; but it has been and continues open by the action of disease.
+This form of disease may, in one sense, be compared to the loss of the
+scarf-skin, and a consequent exposure of surfaces for whose excessive
+sensitiveness, nature has provided a muffling. The loss of this covering
+is attended by an habitual impassability, by influences against which we
+were intended to be guarded. But in the case of the brain, and the
+nerves immediately connected with its functions and its sensuous
+impressions, the cerebral circulation undergoes periodically that
+vibratory disturbance, which, I believe, I have satisfactorily examined
+and demonstrated, in my MS. Essay, A. 17. This vibratory disturbance
+differs, as I there prove, essentially from the congestive disturbance,
+the phenomena of which are examined in A. 19. It is, when excessive,
+invariably accompanied by _illusions_.
+
+"Had I seen Mr. Barton, and examined him upon the points, in his case,
+which need elucidation, I should have without difficulty referred those
+phenomena to their proper disease. My diagnosis is now, necessarily,
+conjectural."
+
+Thus writes Doctor Hesselius; and adds a great deal which is of interest
+only to a scientific physician.
+
+The Narrative of the Rev. Thomas Herbert, which furnishes all that is
+known of the case, will be found in the chapters that follow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FOOT-STEPS.
+
+
+I was a young man at the time, and intimately acquainted with some of
+the actors in this strange tale; the impression which its incidents made
+on me, therefore, were deep, and lasting. I shall now endeavour, with
+precision, to relate them all, combining, of course, in the narrative,
+whatever I have learned from various sources, tending, however
+imperfectly, to illuminate the darkness which involves its progress and
+termination.
+
+Somewhere about the year 1794, the younger brother of a certain baronet,
+whom I shall call Sir James Barton, returned to Dublin. He had served in
+the navy with some distinction, having commanded one of His Majesty's
+frigates during the greater part of the American war. Captain Barton was
+apparently some two or three-and-forty years of age. He was an
+intelligent and agreeable companion when he pleased it, though generally
+reserved, and occasionally even moody.
+
+In society, however, he deported himself as a man of the world, and a
+gentleman. He had not contracted any of the noisy brusqueness sometimes
+acquired at sea; on the contrary, his manners were remarkably easy,
+quiet, and even polished. He was in person about the middle size, and
+somewhat strongly formed--his countenance was marked with the lines of
+thought, and on the whole wore an expression of gravity and melancholy;
+being, however, as I have said, a man of perfect breeding, as well as of
+good family, and in affluent circumstances, he had, of course, ready
+access to the best society of Dublin, without the necessity of any other
+credentials.
+
+In his personal habits Mr. Barton was unexpensive. He occupied lodgings
+in one of the _then_ fashionable streets in the south side of the
+town--kept but one horse and one servant--and though a reputed
+free-thinker, yet lived an orderly and moral life--indulging neither in
+gaming, drinking, nor any other vicious pursuit--living very much to
+himself, without forming intimacies, or choosing any companions, and
+appearing to mix in gay society rather for the sake of its bustle and
+distraction, than for any opportunities it offered of interchanging
+thought or feeling with its votaries.
+
+Barton was therefore pronounced a saving, prudent, unsocial sort of
+fellow, who bid fair to maintain his celibacy alike against stratagem
+and assault, and was likely to live to a good old age, die rich, and
+leave his money to an hospital.
+
+It was now apparent, however, that the nature of Mr. Barton's plans had
+been totally misconceived. A young lady, whom I shall call Miss
+Montague, was at this time introduced into the gay world, by her aunt,
+the Dowager Lady L----. Miss Montague was decidedly pretty and
+accomplished, and having some natural cleverness, and a great deal of
+gaiety, became for a while a reigning toast.
+
+Her popularity, however, gained her, for a time, nothing more than that
+unsubstantial admiration which, however, pleasant as an incense to
+vanity, is by no means necessarily antecedent to matrimony--for,
+unhappily for the young lady in question, it was an understood thing,
+that beyond her personal attractions, she had no kind of earthly
+provision. Such being the state of affairs, it will readily be believed
+that no little surprise was consequent upon the appearance of Captain
+Barton as the avowed lover of the penniless Miss Montague.
+
+His suit prospered, as might have been expected, and in a short time it
+was communicated by old Lady L---- to each of her hundred-and-fifty
+particular friends in succession, that Captain Barton had actually
+tendered proposals of marriage, with her approbation, to her niece, Miss
+Montague, who had, moreover, accepted the offer of his hand,
+conditionally upon the consent of her father, who was then upon his
+homeward voyage from India, and expected in two or three weeks at the
+furthest.
+
+About this consent there could be no doubt--the delay, therefore, was
+one merely of form--they were looked upon as absolutely engaged, and
+Lady L----, with a rigour of old-fashioned decorum with which her niece
+would, no doubt, gladly have dispensed, withdrew her thenceforward from
+all further participation in the gaieties of the town.
+
+Captain Barton was a constant visitor, as well as a frequent guest at
+the house, and was permitted all the privileges of intimacy which a
+betrothed suitor is usually accorded. Such was the relation of parties,
+when the mysterious circumstances which darken this narrative first
+begun to unfold themselves.
+
+Lady L---- resided in a handsome mansion at the north side of Dublin,
+and Captain Barton's lodgings, as we have already said, were situated at
+the south. The distance intervening was considerable, and it was Captain
+Barton's habit generally to walk home without an attendant, as often as
+he passed the evening with the old lady and her fair charge.
+
+His shortest way in such nocturnal walks, lay, for a considerable space,
+through a line of street which had as yet merely been laid out, and
+little more than the foundations of the houses constructed.
+
+One night, shortly after his engagement with Miss Montague had
+commenced, he happened to remain unusually late, in company with her and
+Lady L----. The conversation had turned upon the evidences of
+revelation, which he had disputed with the callous scepticism of a
+confirmed infidel. What were called "French principles," had in those
+days found their way a good deal into fashionable society, especially
+that portion of it which professed allegiance to Whiggism, and neither
+the old lady nor her charge were so perfectly free from the taint, as to
+look upon Mr. Barton's views as any serious objection to the proposed
+union.
+
+The discussion had degenerated into one upon the supernatural and the
+marvellous, in which he had pursued precisely the same line of argument
+and ridicule. In all this, it is but truth to state, Captain Barton, was
+guilty of no affectation--the doctrines upon which he insisted, were, in
+reality, but, too truly the basis of his own fixed belief, if so it
+might be called; and perhaps not the least strange of the many strange
+circumstances connected with my narrative, was the fact, that the
+subject of the fearful influences I am about to describe, was himself,
+from the deliberate conviction of years, an utter disbeliever in what
+are usually termed preternatural agencies.
+
+It was considerably past midnight when Mr. Barton took his leave, and
+set out upon his solitary walk homeward. He had now reached the lonely
+road, with its unfinished dwarf walls tracing the foundations of the
+projected row of houses on either side--the moon was shining mistily,
+and its imperfect light made the road he trod but additionally
+dreary--that utter silence which has in it something indefinably
+exciting, reigned there, and made the sound of his steps, which alone
+broke it, unnaturally loud and distinct.
+
+He had proceeded thus some way, when he, on a sudden, heard other
+footfalls, pattering at a measured pace, and, as it seemed, about two
+score steps behind him.
+
+The suspicion of being dogged is at all times unpleasant; it is,
+however, especially so in a spot so lonely; and this suspicion became so
+strong in the mind of Captain Barton, that he abruptly turned about to
+confront his pursuer, but, though there was quite sufficient moonlight
+to disclose any object upon the road he had traversed, no form of any
+kind was visible there.
+
+The steps he had heard could not have been the reverberation of his own,
+for he stamped his foot upon the ground, and walked briskly up and
+down, in the vain attempt to awake an echo; though by no means a
+fanciful person, therefore he was at last fain to charge the sounds upon
+his imagination, and treat them as an illusion. Thus satisfying himself,
+he resumed his walk, and before he had proceeded a dozen paces, the
+mysterious footfall was again audible from behind, and this time, as if
+with the special design of showing that the sounds were not the
+responses of an echo--the steps sometimes slackened nearly to a halt,
+and sometimes hurried for six or eight strides to a run, and again
+abated to a walk.
+
+Captain Barton, as before, turned suddenly round, and with the same
+result--no object was visible above the deserted level of the road. He
+walked back over the same ground, determined that, whatever might have
+been the cause of the sounds which had so disconcerted him, it should
+not escape his search--the endeavour, however, was unrewarded.
+
+In spite of all his scepticism, he felt something like a superstitious
+fear stealing fast upon him, and with these unwonted and uncomfortable
+sensations, he once more turned and pursued his way. There was no
+repetition of these haunting sounds, until he had reached the point
+where he had last stopped to retrace his steps--here they were
+resumed--and with sudden starts of running, which threatened to bring
+the unseen pursuer up to the alarmed pedestrian.
+
+Captain Barton arrested his course as formerly--the unaccountable nature
+of the occurrence filled him with vague and disagreeable sensations--and
+yielding to the excitement that was gaining upon him, he shouted
+sternly, "Who goes there?" The sound of one's own voice, thus exerted,
+in utter solitude, and followed by total silence, has in it something
+unpleasantly dismaying, and he felt a degree of nervousness which,
+perhaps, from no cause had he ever known before.
+
+To the very end of this solitary street the steps pursued him--and it
+required a strong effort of stubborn pride on his part, to resist the
+impulse that prompted him every moment to run for safety at the top of
+his speed. It was not until he had reached his lodging, and sate by his
+own fire-side, that he felt sufficiently reassured to rearrange and
+reconsider in his own mind the occurrences which had so discomposed him.
+So little a matter, after all, is sufficient to upset the pride of
+scepticism and vindicate the old simple laws of nature within us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WATCHER.
+
+
+Mr. Barton was next morning sitting at a late breakfast, reflecting upon
+the incidents of the previous night, with more of inquisitiveness than
+awe, so speedily do gloomy impressions upon the fancy disappear under
+the cheerful influence of day, when a letter just delivered by the
+postman was placed upon the table before him.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in the address of this missive, except
+that it was written in a hand which he did not know--perhaps it was
+disguised--for the tall narrow characters were sloped backward; and with
+the self-inflicted suspense which we often see practised in such cases,
+he puzzled over the inscription for a full minute before he broke the
+seal. When he did so, he read the following words, written in the same
+hand:--
+
+
+"Mr. Barton, late captain of the 'Dolphin,' is warned of DANGER. He will
+do wisely to avoid ---- street--[here the locality of his last night's
+adventure was named]--if he walks there as usual he will meet with
+something unlucky--let him take warning, once for all, for he has reason
+to dread
+
+        "THE WATCHER."
+
+
+Captain Barton read and re-read this strange effusion; in every light
+and in every direction he turned it over and over; he examined the
+paper on which it was written, and scrutinized the hand-writing once
+more. Defeated here, he turned to the seal; it was nothing but a patch
+of wax, upon which the accidental impression of a thumb was imperfectly
+visible.
+
+There was not the slightest mark, or clue of any kind, to lead him to
+even a guess as to its possible origin. The writer's object seemed a
+friendly one, and yet he subscribed himself as one whom he had "reason
+to dread." Altogether the letter, its author, and its real purpose were
+to him an inexplicable puzzle, and one, moreover, unpleasantly
+suggestive, in his mind, of other associations connected with his last
+night's adventure.
+
+In obedience to some feeling--perhaps of pride--Mr. Barton did not
+communicate, even to his intended bride, the occurrences which I have
+just detailed. Trifling as they might appear, they had in reality most
+disagreeably affected his imagination, and he cared not to disclose,
+even to the young lady in question, what she might possibly look upon as
+evidences of weakness. The letter might very well be but a hoax, and the
+mysterious footfall but a delusion or a trick. But although he affected
+to treat the whole affair as unworthy of a thought, it yet haunted him
+pertinaciously, tormenting him with perplexing doubts, and depressing
+him with undefined apprehensions. Certain it is, that for a considerable
+time afterwards he carefully avoided the street indicated in the letter
+as the scene of danger.
+
+It was not until about a week after the receipt of the letter which I
+have transcribed, that anything further occurred to remind Captain
+Barton of its contents, or to counteract the gradual disappearance from
+his mind of the disagreeable impressions then received.
+
+He was returning one night, after the interval I have stated, from the
+theatre, which was then situated in Crow-street, and having there seen
+Miss Montague and Lady L---- into their carriage, he loitered for some
+time with two or three acquaintances.
+
+With these, however, he parted close to the college, and pursued his way
+alone. It was now fully one o'clock, and the streets were quite
+deserted. During the whole of his walk with the companions from whom he
+had just parted, he had been at times painfully aware of the sound of
+steps, as it seemed, dogging them on their way.
+
+Once or twice he had looked back, in the uneasy anticipation that he was
+again about to experience the same mysterious annoyances which had so
+disconcerted him a week before, and earnestly hoping that he might see
+some form to account naturally for the sounds. But the street was
+deserted--no one was visible.
+
+Proceeding now quite alone upon his homeward way, he grew really nervous
+and uncomfortable, as he became sensible, with increased distinctness,
+of the well-known and now absolutely dreaded sounds.
+
+By the side of the dead wall which bounded the college park, the sounds
+followed, recommencing almost simultaneously with his own steps. The
+same unequal pace--sometimes slow, sometimes for a score yards or so,
+quickened almost to a run--was audible from behind him. Again and again
+he turned; quickly and stealthily he glanced over his shoulder--almost
+at every half-dozen steps; but no one was visible.
+
+The irritation of this intangible and unseen pursuit became gradually
+all but intolerable; and when at last he reached his home, his nerves
+were strung to such a pitch of excitement that he could not rest, and
+did not attempt even to lie down until after the daylight had broken.
+
+He was awakened by a knock at his chamber-door, and his servant
+entering, handed him several letters which had just been received by the
+penny post. One among them instantly arrested his attention--a single
+glance at the direction aroused him thoroughly. He at once recognized its
+character, and read as follows:--
+
+
+"You may as well think, Captain Barton, to escape from your own shadow
+as from me; do what you may, I will see you as often as I please, and
+you shall see me, for I do not want to hide myself, as you fancy. Do not
+let it trouble your rest, Captain Barton; for, with a _good conscience_,
+what need you fear from the eye of
+
+        "THE WATCHER."
+
+It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the feelings that accompanied a
+perusal of this strange communication. Captain Barton was observed to be
+unusually absent and out of spirits for several days afterwards, but no
+one divined the cause.
+
+Whatever he might think as to the phantom steps which followed him,
+there could be no possible illusion about the letters he had received;
+and, to say the least, their immediate sequence upon the mysterious
+sounds which had haunted him, was an odd coincidence.
+
+The whole circumstance was, in his own mind, vaguely and instinctively
+connected with certain passages in his past life, which, of all others,
+he hated to remember.
+
+It happened, however, that in addition to his own approaching nuptials,
+Captain Barton had just then--fortunately, perhaps, for himself--some
+business of an engrossing kind connected with the adjustment of a large
+and long-litigated claim upon certain properties.
+
+The hurry and excitement of business had its natural effect in gradually
+dispelling the gloom which had for a time occasionally oppressed him,
+and in a little while his spirits had entirely recovered their
+accustomed tone.
+
+During all this time, however, he was, now and then, dismayed by
+indistinct and half-heard repetitions of the same annoyance, and that in
+lonely places, in the day-time as well as after nightfall. These
+renewals of the strange impressions from which he had suffered so much,
+were, however, desultory and faint, insomuch that often he really could
+not, to his own satisfaction, distinguish between them and the mere
+suggestions of an excited imagination.
+
+One evening he walked down to the House of Commons with a Member, an
+acquaintance of his and mine. This was one of the few occasions upon
+which I have been in company with Captain Barton. As we walked down
+together, I observed that he became absent and silent, and to a degree
+that seemed to argue the pressure of some urgent and absorbing anxiety.
+
+I afterwards learned that during the whole of our walk, he had heard the
+well-known footsteps tracking him as we proceeded.
+
+This, however, was the last time he suffered from this phase of the
+persecution, of which he was already the anxious victim. A new and a
+very different one was about to be presented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AN ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+Of the new series of impressions which were afterwards gradually to work
+out his destiny, I that evening witnessed the first; and but for its
+relation to the train of events which followed, the incident would
+scarcely have been now remembered by me.
+
+As we were walking in at the passage from College-Green, a man, of whom
+I remember only that he was short in stature, looked like a foreigner,
+and wore a kind of fur travelling-cap, walked very rapidly, and as if
+under fierce excitement, directly towards us, muttering to himself, fast
+and vehemently the while.
+
+This odd-looking person walked straight toward Barton, who was foremost
+of the three, and halted, regarding him for a moment or two with a look
+of maniacal menace and fury; and then turning about as abruptly, he
+walked before us at the same agitated pace, and disappeared at a side
+passage. I do distinctly remember being a good deal shocked at the
+countenance and bearing of this man, which indeed irresistibly impressed
+me with an undefined sense of danger, such as I have never felt before
+or since from the presence of anything human; but these sensations were,
+on my part, far from amounting to anything so disconcerting as to flurry
+or excite me--I had seen only a singularly evil countenance, agitated,
+as it seemed, with the excitement of madness.
+
+I was absolutely astonished, however, at the effect of this apparition
+upon Captain Barton. I knew him to be a man of proud courage and
+coolness in real danger--a circumstance which made his conduct upon this
+occasion the more conspicuously odd. He recoiled a step or two as the
+stranger advanced, and clutched my arm in silence, with what seemed to
+be a spasm of agony or terror! and then, as the figure disappeared,
+shoving me roughly back, he followed it for a few paces, stopped in
+great disorder, and sat down upon a form. I never beheld a countenance
+more ghastly and haggard.
+
+"For God's sake, Barton, what is the matter?" said ----, our companion,
+really alarmed at his appearance. "You're not hurt, are you?--or unwell?
+What is it?"
+
+"What did he say?--I did not hear it--what was it?" asked Barton, wholly
+disregarding the question.
+
+"Nonsense," said ----, greatly surprised; "who cares what the fellow
+said. You are unwell, Barton--decidedly unwell; let me call a coach."
+
+"Unwell! No--not unwell," he said, evidently making an effort to recover
+his self-possession; "but, to say the truth, I am fatigued--a little
+over-worked--and perhaps over anxious. You know I have been in chancery,
+and the winding up of a suit is always a nervous affair. I have felt
+uncomfortable all this evening; but I am better now. Come, come--shall
+we go on?"
+
+"No, no. Take my advice, Barton, and go home; you really do need rest!
+you are looking quite ill. I really do insist on your allowing me to see
+you home," replied his friend.
+
+I seconded ----'s advice, the more readily as it was obvious that Barton
+was not himself disinclined to be persuaded. He left us, declining our
+offered escort. I was not sufficiently intimate with ---- to discuss the
+scene we had both just witnessed. I was, however, convinced from his
+manner in the few common-place comments and regrets we exchanged, that
+he was just as little satisfied as I with the extempore plea of illness
+with which he had accounted for the strange exhibition, and that we were
+both agreed in suspecting some lurking mystery in the matter.
+
+I called next day at Barton's lodgings, to enquire for him, and learned
+from the servant that he had not left his room since his return the
+night before; but that he was not seriously indisposed, and hoped to be
+out in a few days. That evening he sent for Dr. R----, then in large and
+fashionable practice in Dublin, and their interview was, it is said, an
+odd one.
+
+He entered into a detail of his own symptoms in an abstracted and
+desultory way which seemed to argue a strange want of interest in his
+own cure, and, at all events, made it manifest that there was some topic
+engaging his mind of more engrossing importance than his present
+ailment. He complained of occasional palpitations and headache.
+
+Doctor R----, asked him among other questions, whether there was any
+irritating circumstance or anxiety then occupying his thoughts. This he
+denied quickly and almost peevishly; and the physician thereupon
+declared his opinion, that there was nothing amiss except some slight
+derangement of the digestion, for which he accordingly wrote a
+prescription, and was about to withdraw, when Mr. Barton, with the air
+of a man who recollects a topic which had nearly escaped him, recalled
+him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Doctor, but I really almost forgot; will you permit
+me to ask you two or three medical questions--rather odd ones, perhaps,
+but a wager depends upon their solution, you will, I hope, excuse my
+unreasonableness."
+
+The physician readily undertook to satisfy the inquirer.
+
+Barton seemed to have some difficulty about opening the proposed
+interrogatories, for he was silent for a minute, then walked to his
+book-case, and returned as he had gone; at last he sat down and said--
+
+"You'll think them very childish questions, but I can't recover my wager
+without a decision; so I must put them. I want to know first about
+lock-jaw. If a man actually has had that complaint, and appears to have
+died of it--so much so, that a physician of average skill pronounces him
+actually dead--may he, after all, recover?"
+
+The physician smiled, and shook his head.
+
+"But--but a blunder may be made," resumed Barton. "Suppose an ignorant
+pretender to medical skill; may _he_ be so deceived by any stage of the
+complaint, as to mistake what is only a part of the progress of the
+disease, for death itself?"
+
+"No one who had ever seen death," answered he, "could mistake it in a
+case of lock-jaw."
+
+Barton mused for a few minutes. "I am going to ask you a question,
+perhaps, still more childish; but first, tell me, are the regulations of
+foreign hospitals, such as that of, let us say, Naples, very lax and
+bungling. May not all kinds of blunders and slips occur in their entries
+of names, and soforth?"
+
+Doctor R---- professed his incompetence to answer that query.
+
+"Well, then, Doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will,
+probably, laugh at it; but it must out, nevertheless. Is there any
+disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would have the effect
+of perceptibly contracting the stature, and the whole frame--causing the
+man to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact
+resemblance to himself in every particular--with the one exception, his
+height and bulk; any disease, mark--no matter how rare--how little
+believed in, generally--which could possibly result in producing such an
+effect?"
+
+The physician replied with a smile, and a very decided negative.
+
+"Tell me, then," said Barton, abruptly, "if a man be in reasonable fear
+of assault from a lunatic who is at large, can he not procure a warrant
+for his arrest and detention?"
+
+"Really that is more a lawyer's question than one in my way," replied
+Dr. R----: "but I believe, on applying to a magistrate, such a course
+would be directed."
+
+The physician then took his leave; but, just as he reached the
+hall-door, remembered that he had left his cane up stairs, and returned.
+His reappearance was awkward, for a piece of paper, which he recognised
+as his own prescription, was slowly burning upon the fire, and Barton
+sitting close by with an expression of settled gloom and dismay.
+
+Doctor R---- had too much tact to observe what presented itself; but he
+had seen quite enough to assure him that the mind, and not the body, of
+Captain Barton was in reality the seat of suffering.
+
+A few days afterwards, the following advertisement appeared in the
+Dublin newspapers.
+
+"If Sylvester Yelland, formerly a foremast-man on board his Majesty's
+frigate Dolphin, or his nearest of kin, will apply to Mr. Hubert Smith,
+attorney, at his office, Dame Street, he or they may hear of something
+greatly to his or their advantage. Admission may be had at any hour up
+to twelve o'clock at night, should parties desire to avoid observation;
+and the strictest secrecy, as to all communications intended to be
+confidential, shall be honourably observed."
+
+The Dolphin, as I have mentioned, was the vessel which Captain Barton
+had commanded; and this circumstance, connected with the extraordinary
+exertions made by the circulation of hand-bills, &c, as well as by
+repeated advertisements, to secure for this strange notice the utmost
+possible publicity, suggested to Dr. R---- the idea that Captain
+Barton's extreme uneasiness was somehow connected with the individual to
+whom the advertisement was addressed, and he himself the author of it.
+
+This, however, it is needless to add, was no more than a conjecture. No
+information whatsoever, as to the real purpose of the advertisement was
+divulged by the agent, nor yet any hint as to who his employer might
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+HE TALKS WITH A CLERGYMAN.
+
+
+Mr. Barton, although he had latterly begun to earn for himself the
+character of an hypochondriac, was yet very far from deserving it.
+Though by no means lively, he had yet, naturally, what are termed "even
+spirits," and was not subject to undue depressions.
+
+He soon, therefore, began to return to his former habits; and one of the
+earliest symptoms of this healthier tone of spirits was, his appearing
+at a grand dinner of the Freemasons, of which worthy fraternity he was
+himself a brother. Barton, who had been at first gloomy and abstracted,
+drank much more freely than was his wont--possibly with the purpose of
+dispelling his own secret anxieties--and under the influence of good
+wine, and pleasant company, became gradually (unlike himself) talkative,
+and even noisy.
+
+It was under this unwonted excitement that he left his company at about
+half-past ten o'clock; and, as conviviality is a strong incentive to
+gallantry, it occurred to him to proceed forthwith to Lady L----'s and
+pass the remainder of the evening with her and his destined bride.
+
+Accordingly, he was soon at ---- street, and chatting gaily with the
+ladies. It is not to be supposed that Captain Barton had exceeded the
+limits which propriety prescribes to good fellowship--he had merely
+taken enough wine to raise his spirits, without, however, in the least
+degree unsteadying his mind, or affecting his manners.
+
+With this undue elevation of spirits had supervened an entire oblivion
+or contempt of those undefined apprehensions which had for so long
+weighed upon his mind, and to a certain extent estranged him from
+society; but as the night wore away, and his artificial gaiety began to
+flag, these painful feelings gradually intruded themselves again, and he
+grew abstracted and anxious as heretofore.
+
+He took his leave at length, with an unpleasant foreboding of some
+coming mischief, and with a mind haunted with a thousand mysterious
+apprehensions, such as, even while he acutely felt their pressure, he,
+nevertheless, inwardly strove, or affected to contemn.
+
+It was this proud defiance of what he regarded as his own weakness,
+which prompted him upon the present occasion to that course which
+brought about the adventure I am now about to relate.
+
+Mr. Barton might have easily called a coach, but he was conscious that
+his strong inclination to do so proceeded from no cause other than what
+he desperately persisted in representing to himself to be his own
+superstitious tremors.
+
+He might also have returned home by a _route_ different from that
+against which he had been warned by his mysterious correspondent; but
+for the same reason he dismissed this idea also, and with a dogged and
+half desperate resolution to force matters to a crisis of some kind, if
+there were any reality in the causes of his former suffering, and if
+not, satisfactorily to bring their delusiveness to the proof, he
+determined to follow precisely the course which he had trodden upon the
+night so painfully memorable in his own mind as that on which his
+strange persecution commenced. Though, sooth to say, the pilot who for
+the first time steers his vessel under the muzzles of a hostile battery,
+never felt his resolution more severely tasked than did Captain Barton
+as he breathlessly pursued this solitary path--a path which, spite of
+every effort of scepticism and reason, he felt to be infested by some
+(as respected _him_) malignant being.
+
+He pursued his way steadily and rapidly, scarcely breathing from
+intensity of suspense; he, however, was troubled by no renewal of the
+dreaded footsteps, and was beginning to feel a return of confidence, as
+more than three-fourths of the way being accomplished with impunity, he
+approached the long line of twinkling oil lamps which indicated the
+frequented streets.
+
+This feeling of self-congratulation was, however, but momentary. The
+report of a musket at some hundred yards behind him, and the whistle of
+a bullet close to his head, disagreeably and startlingly dispelled it.
+His first impulse was to retrace his steps in pursuit of the assassin;
+but the road on either side was, as we have said, embarrassed by the
+foundations of a street, beyond which extended waste fields, full of
+rubbish and neglected lime and brick-kilns, and all now as utterly
+silent as though no sound had ever disturbed their dark and unsightly
+solitude. The futility of, single-handed, attempting, under such
+circumstances, a search for the murderer, was apparent, especially as no
+sound, either of retreating steps or any other kind, was audible to
+direct his pursuit.
+
+With the tumultuous sensations of one whose life has just been exposed
+to a murderous attempt, and whose escape has been the narrowest
+possible, Captain Barton turned again; and without, however, quickening
+his pace actually to a run, hurriedly pursued his way.
+
+He had turned, as I have said, after a pause of a few seconds, and had
+just commenced his rapid retreat, when on a sudden he met the
+well-remembered little man in the fur cap. The encounter was but
+momentary. The figure was walking at the same exaggerated pace, and with
+the same strange air of menace as before; and as it passed him, he
+thought he heard it say, in a furious whisper, "Still alive--still
+alive!"
+
+The state of Mr. Barton's spirits began now to work a corresponding
+alteration in his health and looks, and to such a degree that it was
+impossible that the change should escape general remark.
+
+For some reasons, known but to himself, he took no step whatsoever to
+bring the attempt upon his life, which he had so narrowly escaped, under
+the notice of the authorities; on the contrary, he kept it jealously to
+himself; and it was not for many weeks after the occurrence that he
+mentioned it, and then in strict confidence, to a gentleman, whom the
+torments of his mind at last compelled him to consult.
+
+Spite of his blue devils, however, poor Barton, having no satisfactory
+reason to render to the public for any undue remissness in the
+attentions exacted by the relation subsisting between him and Miss
+Montague was obliged to exert himself, and present to the world a
+confident and cheerful bearing.
+
+The true source of his sufferings, and every circumstance connected with
+them, he guarded with a reserve so jealous, that it seemed dictated by
+at least a suspicion that the origin of his strange persecution was
+known to himself, and that it was of a nature which, upon his own
+account, he could not or dared not disclose.
+
+The mind thus turned in upon itself, and constantly occupied with a
+haunting anxiety which it dared not reveal or confide to any human
+breast, became daily more excited, and, of course, more vividly
+impressible, by a system of attack which operated through the nervous
+system; and in this state he was destined to sustain, with increasing
+frequency, the stealthy visitations of that apparition which from the
+first had seemed to possess so terrible a hold upon his imagination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about this time that Captain Barton called upon the then
+celebrated preacher, Dr. ----, with whom he had a slight acquaintance,
+and an extraordinary conversation ensued.
+
+The divine was seated in his chambers in college, surrounded with works
+upon his favourite pursuit, and deep in theology, when Barton was
+announced.
+
+There was something at once embarrassed and excited in his manner,
+which, along with his wan and haggard countenance, impressed the student
+with the unpleasant consciousness that his visitor must have recently
+suffered terribly indeed, to account for an alteration so
+striking--almost shocking.
+
+After the usual interchange of polite greeting, and a few common-place
+remarks, Captain Barton, who obviously perceived the surprise which his
+visit had excited, and which Doctor ---- was unable wholly to conceal,
+interrupted a brief pause by remarking--
+
+"This is a strange call, Doctor ----, perhaps scarcely warranted by an
+acquaintance so slight as mine with you. I should not under ordinary
+circumstances have ventured to disturb you; but my visit is neither an
+idle nor impertinent intrusion. I am sure you will not so account it,
+when I tell you how afflicted I am."
+
+Doctor ---- interrupted him with assurances such as good breeding
+suggested, and Barton resumed--
+
+"I am come to task your patience by asking your advice. When I say your
+patience, I might, indeed, say more; I might have said your
+humanity--your compassion; for I have been and am a great sufferer."
+
+"My dear sir," replied the churchman, "it will, indeed, afford me
+infinite gratification if I can give you comfort in any distress of
+mind; but--you know----"
+
+"I know what you would say," resumed Barton, quickly; "I am an
+unbeliever, and, therefore, incapable of deriving help from religion;
+but don't take that for granted. At least you must not assume that,
+however unsettled my convictions may be, I do not feel a deep--a very
+deep--interest in the subject. Circumstances have lately forced it upon
+my attention, in such a way as to compel me to review the whole
+question in a more candid and teachable spirit, I believe, than I ever
+studied it in before."
+
+"Your difficulties, I take it for granted, refer to the evidences of
+revelation," suggested the clergyman.
+
+"Why--no--not altogether; in fact I am ashamed to say I have not
+considered even my objections sufficiently to state them connectedly;
+but--but there is one subject on which I feel a peculiar interest."
+
+He paused again, and Doctor ---- pressed him to proceed.
+
+"The fact is," said Barton, "whatever may be my uncertainty as to the
+authenticity of what we are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am
+deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond this a
+spiritual world--a system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden
+from us--a system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and
+terribly revealed. I am sure--I _know_," continued Barton, with
+increasing excitement, "that there is a God--a dreadful God--and that
+retribution follows guilt, in ways the most mysterious and
+stupendous--by agencies the most inexplicable and terrific;--there is a
+spiritual system--great God, how I have been convinced!--a system
+malignant, and implacable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I
+am, and have been, suffering the torments of the damned!--yes,
+sir--yes--the fires and frenzy of hell!"
+
+As Barton spoke, his agitation became so vehement that the Divine was
+shocked, and even alarmed. The wild and excited rapidity with which he
+spoke, and, above all, the indefinable horror, that stamped his
+features, afforded a contrast to his ordinary cool and unimpassioned
+self-possession striking and painful in the last degree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MR. BARTON STATES HIS CASE.
+
+
+"My dear sir," said Doctor ----, after a brief pause, "I fear you have
+been very unhappy, indeed; but I venture to predict that the depression
+under which you labour will be found to originate in purely physical
+causes, and that with a change of air, and the aid of a few tonics, your
+spirits will return, and the tone of your mind be once more cheerful and
+tranquil as heretofore. There was, after all, more truth than we are
+quite willing to admit in the classic theories which assigned the undue
+predominance of any one affection of the mind, to the undue action or
+torpidity of one or other of our bodily organs. Believe me, that a
+little attention to diet, exercise, and the other essentials of health,
+under competent direction, will make you as much yourself as you can
+wish."
+
+"Doctor ----" said Barton, with something like a shudder, "I _cannot_
+delude myself with such a hope. I have no hope to cling to but one, and
+that is, that by some other spiritual agency more potent than that which
+tortures me, _it_ may be combated, and I delivered. If this may not be,
+I am lost--now and for ever lost."
+
+"But, Mr. Barton, you must remember," urged his companion, "that others
+have suffered as you have done, and----"
+
+"No, no, no," interrupted he, with irritability--"no, sir, I am not a
+credulous--far from a superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much
+the reverse--too sceptical, too slow of belief; but unless I were one
+whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to contemn the
+repeated, the _perpetual_ evidence of my own senses, I am now--now at
+last constrained to believe--I have no escape from the conviction--the
+overwhelming certainty--that I am haunted and dogged, go where I may,
+by--by a DEMON!"
+
+There was a preternatural energy of horror in Barton's face, as, with
+its damp and death-like lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus
+delivered himself.
+
+"God help you, my poor friend," said Dr. ----, much shocked, "God help
+you; for, indeed, you _are_ a sufferer, however your sufferings may have
+been caused."
+
+"Ay, ay, God help me," echoed Barton, sternly; "but _will_ he help
+me--will he help me?"
+
+"Pray to him--pray in an humble and trusting spirit," said he.
+
+"Pray, pray," echoed he again; "I can't pray--I could as easily move a
+mountain by an effort of my will. I have not belief enough to pray;
+there is something within me that will not pray. You prescribe
+impossibilities--literal impossibilities."
+
+"You will not find it so, if you will but try," said Doctor ----.
+
+"Try! I _have_ tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion; and,
+sometimes, terror; I have tried in vain, and more than in vain. The
+awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity oppresses and maddens
+my brain whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the Creator; I
+recoil from the effort scared. I tell you, Doctor ----, if I am to be
+saved, it must be by other means. The idea of an eternal Creator is to
+me intolerable--my mind cannot support it."
+
+"Say, then, my dear sir," urged he, "say how you would have me serve
+you--what you would learn of me--what I can do or say to relieve you?"
+
+"Listen to me first," replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an
+effort to suppress his excitement, "listen to me while I detail the
+circumstances of the persecution under which my life has become all but
+intolerable--a persecution which has made me fear _death_ and the world
+beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence."
+
+Barton then proceeded to relate the circumstances which I have already
+detailed, and then continued:
+
+"This has now become habitual--an accustomed thing. I do not mean the
+actual seeing him in the flesh--thank God, _that_ at least is not
+permitted daily. Thank God, from the ineffable horrors of that
+visitation I have been mercifully allowed intervals of repose, though
+none of security; but from the consciousness that a malignant spirit is
+following and watching me wherever I go, I have never, for a single
+instant, a temporary respite. I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of
+despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after
+me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the night-time,
+while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me
+with hideous crimes, and--great God!--threatening me with coming
+vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear _that_?" he cried with a
+horrible smile of triumph; "there, there, will that convince you?"
+
+The clergyman felt a chill of horror steal over him, while, during the
+wail of a sudden gust of wind, he heard, or fancied he heard, the half
+articulate sounds of rage and derision mingling in the sough.
+
+"Well, what do you think of _that_?" at length Barton cried, drawing a
+long breath through his teeth.
+
+"I heard the wind," said Doctor ----.
+
+"What should I think of it--what is there remarkable about it?"
+
+"The prince of the powers of the air," muttered Barton, with a shudder.
+
+"Tut, tut! my dear sir," said the student, with an effort to reassure
+himself; for though it was broad daylight, there was nevertheless
+something disagreeably contagious in the nervous excitement under which
+his visitor so miserably suffered. "You must not give way to those wild
+fancies; you must resist these impulses of the imagination."
+
+"Ay, ay; 'resist the devil and he will flee from thee,'" said Barton, in
+the same tone; "but _how_ resist him? ay, there it is--there is the rub.
+What--_what_ am I to do? what _can_ I do?"
+
+"My dear sir, this _is_ fancy," said the man of folios; "you are your
+own tormentor."
+
+"No, no, sir--fancy has no part in it," answered Barton, somewhat
+sternly. "Fancy! was it that made you, as well as me, hear, but this
+moment, those accents of hell? Fancy, indeed! No, no."
+
+"But you have seen this person frequently," said the ecclesiastic; "why
+have you not accosted or secured him? Is it not a little precipitate, to
+say no more, to assume, as you have done, the existence of preternatural
+agency, when, after all, everything may be easily accountable, if only
+proper means were taken to sift the matter."
+
+"There are circumstances connected with this--this _appearance_," said
+Barton, "which it is needless to disclose, but which to _me_ are proof
+of its horrible nature. I know that the being that follows me is not
+human--I say I know this; I could prove it to your own conviction." He
+paused for a minute, and then added, "And as to accosting it, I dare
+not, I could not; when I see it I am powerless; I stand in the gaze of
+death, in the triumphant presence of infernal power and malignity. My
+strength, and faculties, and memory, all forsake me. O God, I fear, sir,
+you know not what you speak of. Mercy, mercy; heaven have pity on me!"
+
+He leaned his elbow on the table, and passed his hand across his eyes,
+as if to exclude some image of horror, muttering the last words of the
+sentence he had just concluded, again and again.
+
+"Doctor ----," he said, abruptly raising himself, and looking full upon
+the clergyman with an imploring eye, "I know you will do for me whatever
+may be done. You know now fully the circumstances and the nature of my
+affliction. I tell you I cannot help myself; I cannot hope to escape; I
+am utterly passive. I conjure you, then, to weigh my case well, and if
+anything may be done for me by vicarious supplication--by the
+intercession of the good--or by any aid or influence whatsoever, I
+implore of you, I adjure you in the name of the Most High, give me the
+benefit of that influence--deliver me from the body of this death.
+Strive for me, pity me; I know you will; you cannot refuse this; it is
+the purpose and object of my visit. Send me away with some hope, however
+little, some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve myself
+to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence
+has been transformed."
+
+Doctor ---- assured him that all he could do was to pray earnestly for
+him, and that so much he would not fail to do. They parted with a
+hurried and melancholy valediction. Barton hastened to the carriage that
+awaited him at the door, drew down the blinds, and drove away, while
+Doctor ---- returned to his chamber, to ruminate at leisure upon the
+strange interview which had just interrupted his studies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SEEN AGAIN.
+
+
+It was not to be expected that Captain Barton's changed and eccentric
+habits should long escape remark and discussion. Various were the
+theories suggested to account for it. Some attributed the alteration to
+the pressure of secret pecuniary embarrassments; others to a repugnance
+to fulfil an engagement into which he was presumed to have too
+precipitately entered; and others, again, to the supposed incipiency of
+mental disease, which latter, indeed, was the most plausible as well as
+the most generally, received, of the hypotheses circulated in the gossip
+of the day.
+
+From the very commencement of this change, at first so gradual in its
+advances, Miss Montague had of course been aware of it. The intimacy
+involved in their peculiar relation, as well as the near interest which
+it inspired afforded, in her case, a like opportunity and motive for the
+successful exercise of that keen and penetrating observation peculiar to
+her sex.
+
+His visits became, at length, so interrupted, and his manner, while they
+lasted, so abstracted, strange, and agitated, that Lady L----, after
+hinting her anxiety and her suspicions more than once, at length
+distinctly stated her anxiety, and pressed for an explanation.
+
+The explanation was given, and although its nature at first relieved the
+worst solicitudes of the old lady and her niece, yet the circumstances
+which attended it, and the really dreadful consequences which it
+obviously indicated, as regarded the spirits, and indeed the reason of
+the now wretched man, who made the strange declaration, were enough,
+upon little reflection, to fill their minds with perturbation and alarm.
+
+General Montague, the young lady's father, at length arrived. He had
+himself slightly known Barton, some ten or twelve years previously, and
+being aware of his fortune and connexions, was disposed to regard him as
+an unexceptionable and indeed a most desirable match for his daughter.
+He laughed at the story of Barton's supernatural visitations, and lost
+no time in calling upon his intended son-in-law.
+
+"My dear Barton," he continued, gaily, after a little conversation, "my
+sister tells me that you are a victim to blue devils, in quite a new and
+original shape."
+
+Barton changed countenance, and sighed profoundly.
+
+"Come, come; I protest this will never do," continued the General; "you
+are more like a man on his way to the gallows than to the altar. These
+devils have made quite a saint of you."
+
+Barton made an effort to change the conversation.
+
+"No, no, it won't do," said his visitor laughing; "I am resolved to say
+what I have to say upon this magnificent mock mystery of yours. You must
+not be angry, but really it is too bad to see you at your time of life,
+absolutely frightened into good behaviour, like a naughty child by a
+bugaboo, and as far as I can learn, a very contemptible one. Seriously,
+I have been a good deal annoyed at what they tell me; but at the same
+time thoroughly convinced that there is nothing in the matter that may
+not cleared up, with a little attention and management, within a week at
+furthest."
+
+"Ah, General, you do not know--" he began.
+
+"Yes, but I do know quite enough to warrant my confidence," interrupted
+the soldier, "don't I know that all your annoyance proceeds from the
+occasional appearance of a certain little man in a cap and great-coat,
+with a red vest and a bad face, who follows you about, and pops upon you
+at corners of lanes, and throws you into ague fits. Now, my dear fellow,
+I'll make it my business to catch this mischievous little mountebank,
+and either beat him to a jelly with my own hands, or have him whipped
+through the town, at the cart's-tail, before a month passes."
+
+"If _you_ knew what _I_ knew," said Barton, with gloomy agitation, "you
+would speak very differently. Don't imagine that I am so weak as to
+assume, without proof the most overwhelming, the conclusion to which I
+have been forced--the proofs are here, locked up here." As he spoke he
+tapped upon his breast, and with an anxious sigh continued to walk up
+and down the room.
+
+"Well, well, Barton," said his visitor, "I'll wager a rump and a dozen I
+collar the ghost, and convince even you before many days are over."
+
+He was running on in the same strain when he was suddenly arrested, and
+not a little shocked, by observing Barton, who had approached the
+window, stagger slowly back, like one who had received a stunning blow;
+his arm extended toward the street--his face and his very lips white as
+ashes--while he muttered, "There--by heaven!--there--there!"
+
+General Montague started mechanically to his feet, and from the window
+of the drawing-room, saw a figure corresponding as well as his hurry
+would permit him to discern, with the description of the person, whose
+appearance so persistently disturbed the repose of his friend.
+
+The figure was just turning from the rails of the area upon which it had
+been leaning, and, without waiting to see more, the old gentleman
+snatched his cane and hat, and rushed down the stairs and into the
+street, in the furious hope of securing the person, and punishing the
+audacity of the mysterious stranger.
+
+He looked round him, but in vain, for any trace of the person he had
+himself distinctly seen. He ran breathlessly to the nearest corner,
+expecting to see from thence the retiring figure, but no such form was
+visible. Back and forward, from crossing to crossing, he ran, at fault,
+and it was not until the curious gaze and laughing countenances of the
+passers-by reminded him of the absurdity of his pursuit, that he
+checked his hurried pace, lowered his walking cane from the menacing
+altitude which he had mechanically given it, adjusted his hat, and
+walked composedly back again, inwardly vexed and flurried. He found
+Barton pale and trembling in every joint; they both remained silent,
+though under emotions very different. At last Barton whispered, "You saw
+it?"
+
+"_It!_--him--some one--you mean--to be sure I did," replied Montague,
+testily. "But where is the good or the harm of seeing him? The fellow
+runs like a lamp-lighter. I wanted to _catch_ him, but he had stole away
+before I could reach the hall-door. However, it is no great matter; next
+time, I dare say, I'll do better; and egad, if I once come within reach
+of him, I'll introduce his shoulders to the weight of my cane."
+
+Notwithstanding General Montague's undertakings and exhortations,
+however, Barton continued to suffer from the self-same unexplained
+cause; go how, when, or where he would, he was still constantly dogged
+or confronted by the being who had established over him so horrible an
+influence.
+
+Nowhere and at no time was he secure against the odious appearance which
+haunted him with such diabolic perseverance.
+
+His depression, misery, and excitement became more settled and alarming
+every day, and the mental agonies that ceaselessly preyed upon him,
+began at last so sensibly to affect his health, that Lady L---- and
+General Montague succeeded, without, indeed, much difficulty, in
+persuading him to try a short tour on the Continent, in the hope that an
+entire change of scene would, at all events, have the effect of breaking
+through the influences of local association, which the more sceptical of
+his friends assumed to be by no means inoperative in suggesting and
+perpetuating what they conceived to be a mere form of nervous illusion.
+
+General Montague indeed was persuaded that the figure which haunted his
+intended son-in-law was by no means the creation of his imagination,
+but, on the contrary, a substantial form of flesh and blood, animated by
+a resolution, perhaps with some murderous object in perspective, to
+watch and follow the unfortunate gentleman.
+
+Even this hypothesis was not a very pleasant one; yet it was plain that
+if Barton could ever be convinced that there was nothing preternatural
+in the phenomenon which he had hitherto regarded in that light, the
+affair would lose all its terrors in his eyes, and wholly cease to
+exercise upon his health and spirits the baleful influence which it had
+hitherto done. He therefore reasoned, that if the annoyance were
+actually escaped by mere locomotion and change of scene, it obviously
+could not have originated in any supernatural agency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FLIGHT.
+
+
+Yielding to their persuasions, Barton left Dublin for England,
+accompanied by General Montague. They posted rapidly to London, and
+thence to Dover, whence they took the packet with a fair wind for
+Calais. The General's confidence in the result of the expedition on
+Barton's spirits had risen day by day, since their departure from the
+shores of Ireland; for to the inexpressible relief and delight of the
+latter, he had not since then, so much as even once fancied a repetition
+of those impressions which had, when at home, drawn him gradually down
+to the very depths of despair.
+
+This exemption from what he had begun to regard as the inevitable
+condition of his existence, and the sense of security which began to
+pervade his mind, were inexpressibly delightful; and in the exultation
+of what he considered his deliverance, he indulged in a thousand happy
+anticipations for a future into which so lately he had hardly dared to
+look; and in short, both he and his companion secretly congratulated
+themselves upon the termination of that persecution which had been to
+its immediate victim a source of such unspeakable agony.
+
+It was a beautiful day, and a crowd of idlers stood upon the jetty to
+receive the packet, and enjoy the bustle of the new arrivals. Montague
+walked a few paces in advance of his friend, and as he made his way
+through the crowd, a little man touched his arm, and said to him, in a
+broad provincial _patois_--
+
+"Monsieur is walking too fast; he will lose his sick comrade in the
+throng, for, by my faith, the poor gentleman seems to be fainting."
+
+Montague turned quickly, and observed that Barton did indeed look deadly
+pale. He hastened to his side.
+
+"My dear fellow, are you ill?" he asked anxiously.
+
+The question was unheeded and twice, repeated, ere Barton stammered--
+
+"I saw him--by----, I saw him!"
+
+"_Him!_--the wretch--who--where now?--where is he?" cried Montague,
+looking around him.
+
+"I saw him--but he is gone," repeated Barton, faintly.
+
+"But where--where? For God's sake speak," urged Montague, vehemently.
+
+"It is but this moment--_here_," said he.
+
+"But what did he look like--what had he on--what did he wear--quick,
+quick," urged his excited companion, ready to dart among the crowd and
+collar the delinquent on the spot.
+
+"He touched your arm--he spoke to you--he pointed to me. God be merciful
+to me, there is no escape," said Barton, in the low, subdued tones of
+despair.
+
+Montague had already bustled away in all the flurry of mingled hope and
+rage; but though the singular _personnel_ of the stranger who had
+accosted him was vividly impressed upon his recollection, he failed to
+discover among the crowd even the slightest resemblance to him.
+
+After a fruitless search, in which he enlisted the services of several
+of the by-standers, who aided all the more zealously, as they believed
+he had been robbed, he at length, out of breath and baffled, gave over
+the attempt.
+
+"Ah, my friend, it won't do," said Barton, with the faint voice and
+bewildered, ghastly look of one who had been stunned by some mortal
+shock; "there is no use in contending; whatever it is, the dreadful
+association between me and it, is now established--I shall never
+escape--never!"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Barton; don't talk so," said Montague with
+something at once of irritation and dismay; "you must not, I say; we'll
+jockey the scoundrel yet; never mind, I say--never mind."
+
+It was, however, but labour lost to endeavour henceforward to inspire
+Barton with one ray of hope; he became desponding.
+
+This intangible, and, as it seemed, utterly inadequate influence was
+fast destroying his energies of intellect, character, and health. His
+first object was now to return to Ireland, there, as he believed, and
+now almost hoped, speedily to die.
+
+To Ireland accordingly he came and one of the first faces he saw upon
+the shore, was again that of his implacable and dreaded attendant.
+Barton seemed at last to have lost not only all enjoyment and every hope
+in existence, but all independence of will besides. He now submitted
+himself passively to the management of the friends most nearly
+interested in his welfare.
+
+With the apathy of entire despair, he implicitly assented to whatever
+measures they suggested and advised; and as a last resource, it was
+determined to remove him to a house of Lady L----'s, in the
+neighbourhood of Clontarf, where, with the advice of his medical
+attendant, who persisted in his opinion that the whole train of
+consequences resulted merely from some nervous derangement, it was
+resolved that he was to confine himself, strictly to the house, and to
+make use only of those apartments which commanded a view of an enclosed
+yard, the gates of which were to be kept jealously locked.
+
+Those precautions would certainly secure him against the casual
+appearance of any living form, that his excited imagination might
+possibly confound with the spectre which, as it was contended, his fancy
+recognised in every figure that bore even a distant or general
+resemblance to the peculiarities with which his fancy had at first
+invested it.
+
+A month or six weeks' absolute seclusion under these conditions, it was
+hoped might, by interrupting the series of these terrible impressions,
+gradually dispel the predisposing apprehensions, and the associations
+which had confirmed the supposed disease, and rendered recovery
+hopeless.
+
+Cheerful society and that of his friends was to be constantly supplied,
+and on the whole, very sanguine expectations were indulged in, that
+under the treatment thus detailed, the obstinate hypochondria of the
+patient might at length give way.
+
+Accompanied, therefore, by Lady L----, General Montague and his
+daughter--his own affianced bride--poor Barton--himself never daring to
+cherish a hope of his ultimate emancipation from the horrors under which
+his life was literally wasting away--took possession of the apartments,
+whose situation protected him against the intrusions, from which he
+shrank with such unutterable terror.
+
+After a little time, a steady persistence in this system began to
+manifest its results, in a very marked though gradual improvement, alike
+in the health and spirits of the invalid. Not, indeed, that anything at
+all approaching complete recovery was yet discernible. On the contrary,
+to those who had not seen him since the commencement of his strange
+sufferings, such an alteration would have been apparent as might well
+have shocked them.
+
+The improvement, however, such as it was, was welcomed with gratitude
+and delight, especially by the young lady, whom her attachment to him,
+as well as her now singularly painful position, consequent on his
+protracted illness, rendered an object scarcely one degree less to be
+commiserated than himself.
+
+A week passed--a fortnight--a month--and yet there had been no
+recurrence of the hated visitation. The treatment had, so far forth,
+been followed by complete success. The chain of associations was broken.
+The constant pressure upon the overtasked spirits had been removed, and,
+under these comparatively favourable circumstances, the sense of social
+community with the world about him, and something of human interest, if
+not of enjoyment, began to reanimate him.
+
+It was about this time that Lady L---- who, like most old ladies of the
+day, was deep in family receipts, and a great pretender to medical
+science, dispatched her own maid to the kitchen garden, with a list of
+herbs, which were there to be carefully culled, and brought back to her
+housekeeper for the purpose stated. The handmaiden, however, returned
+with her task scarce half completed, and a good deal flurried and
+alarmed. Her mode of accounting for her precipitate retreat and evident
+agitation was odd, and, to the old lady, startling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOFTENED.
+
+
+It appeared that she had repaired to the kitchen garden, pursuant to her
+mistress's directions, and had there begun to make the specified
+election among the rank and neglected herbs which crowded one corner of
+the enclosure, and while engaged in this pleasant labour, she carelessly
+sang a fragment of an old song, as she said, "to keep herself company."
+She was, however, interrupted by an ill-natured laugh; and, looking up,
+she saw through the old thorn hedge, which surrounded the garden, a
+singularly ill-looking little man, whose countenance wore the stamp of
+menace and malignity, standing close to her, at the other side of the
+hawthorn screen.
+
+She described herself as utterly unable to move or speak, while he
+charged her with a message for Captain Barton; the substance of which
+she distinctly remembered to have been to the effect, that he, Captain
+Barton, must come abroad as usual, and show himself to his friends, out
+of doors, or else prepare for a visit in his own chamber.
+
+On concluding this brief message, the stranger had, with a threatening
+air, got down into the outer ditch, and, seizing the hawthorn stems in
+his hands, seemed on the point of climbing through the fence--a feat
+which might have been accomplished without much difficulty.
+
+Without, of course, awaiting this result, the girl--throwing down her
+treasures of thyme and rosemary--had turned and run, with the swiftness
+of terror, to the house. Lady L---- commanded her, on pain of instant
+dismissal, to observe an absolute silence respecting all that passed of
+the incident which related to Captain Barton; and, at the same time,
+directed instant search to be made by her men, in the garden and the
+fields adjacent. This measure, however, was as usual, unsuccessful, and,
+filled with undefinable misgivings, Lady L---- communicated the incident
+to her brother. The story, however, until long afterwards, went no
+further, and, of course, it was jealously guarded from Barton, who
+continued to amend, though slowly.
+
+Barton now began to walk occasionally in the court-yard which I have
+mentioned, and which being enclosed by a high wall, commanded no view
+beyond its own extent. Here he, therefore, considered himself perfectly
+secure: and, but for a careless violation of orders by one of the
+grooms, he might have enjoyed, at least for some time longer, his
+much-prized immunity. Opening upon the public road, this yard was
+entered by a wooden gate, with a wicket in it, and was further defended
+by an iron gate upon the outside. Strict orders had been given to keep
+both carefully locked; but, spite of these, it had happened that one
+day, as Barton was slowly pacing this narrow enclosure, in his
+accustomed walk, and reaching the further extremity, was turning to
+retrace his steps, he saw the boarded wicket ajar, and the face of his
+tormentor immovably looking at him through the iron bars. For a few
+seconds he stood rivetted to the earth--breathless and bloodless--in the
+fascination of that dreaded gaze, and then fell helplessly insensible,
+upon the pavement.
+
+There he was found a few minutes afterwards, and conveyed to his
+room--the apartment which he was never afterwards to leave alive.
+Henceforward a marked and unaccountable change was observable in the
+tone of his mind. Captain Barton was now no longer the excited and
+despairing man he had been before; a strange alteration had passed upon
+him--an unearthly tranquillity reigned in his mind--it was the
+anticipated stillness of the grave.
+
+"Montague, my friend, this struggle is nearly ended now," he said,
+tranquilly, but with a look of fixed and fearful awe. "I have, at last,
+some comfort from that world of spirits, from which my punishment has
+come. I now know that my sufferings will soon be over."
+
+Montague pressed him to speak on.
+
+"Yes," said he, in a softened voice, "my punishment is nearly ended.
+From sorrow, perhaps I shall never, in time or eternity, escape; but my
+_agony_ is almost over. Comfort has been revealed to me, and what
+remains of my allotted struggle I will bear with submission--even with
+hope."
+
+"I am glad to hear you speak so tranquilly, my dear Barton," said
+Montague; "peace and cheer of mind are all you need to make you what you
+were."
+
+"No, no--I never can be that," said he mournfully. "I am no longer fit
+for life. I am soon to die. I am to see him but once again, and then all
+is ended."
+
+"He said so, then?" suggested Montague.
+
+"_He?_--No, no: good tidings could scarcely come through him; and these
+were good and welcome; and they came so solemnly and sweetly--with
+unutterable love and melancholy, such as I could not--without saying
+more than is needful, or fitting, of other long-past scenes and
+persons--fully explain to you." As Barton said this he shed tears.
+
+"Come, come," said Montague, mistaking the source of his emotions, "you
+must not give way. What is it, after all, but a pack of dreams and
+nonsense; or, at worst, the practices of a scheming rascal that enjoys
+his power of playing upon your nerves, and loves to exert it--a sneaking
+vagabond that owes you a grudge, and pays it off this way, not daring to
+try a more manly one."
+
+"A grudge, indeed, he owes me--you say rightly," said Barton, with a
+sudden shudder; "a grudge as you call it. Oh, my God! when the justice
+of Heaven permits the Evil one to carry out a scheme of vengeance--when
+its execution is committed to the lost and terrible victim of sin, who
+owes his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is commissioned to
+pursue--then, indeed, the torments and terrors of hell are anticipated
+on earth. But heaven has dealt mercifully with me--hope has opened to me
+at last; and if death could come without the dreadful sight I am doomed
+to see, I would gladly close my eyes this moment upon the world. But
+though death is welcome, I shrink with an agony you cannot
+understand--an actual frenzy of terror--from the last encounter with
+that--that demon, who has drawn me thus to the verge of the chasm, and
+who is himself to plunge me down. I am to see him again--once more--but
+under circumstances unutterably more terrific than ever."
+
+As Barton thus spoke, he trembled so violently that Montague was really
+alarmed at the extremity of his sudden agitation, and hastened to lead
+him back to the topic which had before seemed to exert so tranquillizing
+an effect upon his mind.
+
+"It was not a dream," he said, after a time; "I was in a different
+state--I felt differently and strangely; and yet it was all as real, as
+clear, and vivid, as what I now see and hear--it was a reality."
+
+"And what _did_ you see and hear?" urged his companion.
+
+"When I wakened from the swoon I fell into on seeing _him_," said
+Barton, continuing as if he had not heard the question, "it was slowly,
+very slowly--I was lying by the margin of a broad lake, with misty hills
+all round, and a soft, melancholy, rose-coloured light illuminated it
+all. It was unusually sad and lonely, and yet more beautiful than any
+earthly scene. My head was leaning on the lap of a girl, and she was
+singing a song, that told, I know not how--whether by words or
+harmonies--of all my life--all that is past, and all that is still to
+come; and with the song the old feelings that I thought had perished
+within me came back, and tears flowed from my eyes--partly for the song
+and its mysterious beauty, and partly for the unearthly sweetness of
+her voice; and yet I knew the voice--oh! how well; and I was spell-bound
+as I listened and looked at the solitary scene, without stirring, almost
+without breathing--and, alas! alas! without turning my eyes toward the
+face that I knew was near me, so sweetly powerful was the enchantment
+that held me. And so, slowly, the song and scene grew fainter, and
+fainter, to my senses, till all was dark and still again. And then I
+awoke to this world, as you saw, comforted, for I knew that I was
+forgiven much." Barton wept again long and bitterly.
+
+From this time, as we have said, the prevailing tone of his mind was one
+of profound and tranquil melancholy. This, however, was not without its
+interruptions. He was thoroughly impressed with the conviction that he
+was to experience another and a final visitation, transcending in horror
+all he had before experienced. From this anticipated and unknown agony,
+he often shrank in such paroxysms of abject terror and distraction, as
+filled the whole household with dismay and superstitious panic. Even
+those among them who affected to discredit the theory of preternatural
+agency, were often in their secret souls visited during the silence of
+night with qualms and apprehensions, which they would not have readily
+confessed; and none of them attempted to dissuade Barton from the
+resolution on which he now systematically acted, of shutting himself up
+in his own apartment. The window-blinds of this room were kept jealously
+down; and his own man was seldom out of his presence, day or night, his
+bed being placed in the same chamber.
+
+This man was an attached and respectable servant; and his duties, in
+addition to those ordinarily imposed upon valets, but which Barton's
+independent habits generally dispensed with, were to attend carefully to
+the simple precautions by means of which his master hoped to exclude the
+dreaded intrusion of the "Watcher." And, in addition to attending to
+those arrangements, which amounted merely to guarding against the
+possibility of his master's being, through any unscreened window or open
+door, exposed to the dreaded influence, the valet was never to suffer
+him to be alone--total solitude, even for a minute, had become to him
+now almost as intolerable as the idea of going abroad into the public
+ways--it was an instinctive anticipation of what was coming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REQUIESCAT.
+
+
+It is needless to say, that under these circumstances, no steps were
+taken toward the fulfilment of that engagement into which he had
+entered. There was quite disparity enough in point of years, and indeed
+of habits, between the young lady and Captain Barton, to have precluded
+anything like very vehement or romantic attachment on her part. Though
+grieved and anxious, therefore, she was very far from being
+heart-broken.
+
+Miss Montague, however, devoted much of her time to the patient but
+fruitless attempt to cheer the unhappy invalid. She read for him, and
+conversed with him; but it was apparent that whatever exertions he made,
+the endeavour to escape from the one ever waking fear that preyed upon
+him, was utterly and miserably unavailing.
+
+Young ladies are much given to the cultivation of pets; and among those
+who shared the favour of Miss Montague was a fine old owl, which the
+gardener, who caught him napping among the ivy of a ruined stable, had
+dutifully presented to that young lady.
+
+The caprice which regulates such preferences was manifested in the
+extravagant favour with which this grim and ill-favoured bird was at
+once distinguished by his mistress; and, trifling as this whimsical
+circumstance may seem, I am forced to mention it, inasmuch as it is
+connected, oddly enough, with the concluding scene of the story.
+
+Barton, so far from sharing in this liking for the new favourite,
+regarded it from the first with an antipathy as violent as it was
+utterly unaccountable. Its very vicinity was unsupportable to him. He
+seemed to hate and dread it with a vehemence absolutely laughable, and
+which to those who have never witnessed the exhibition of antipathies of
+this kind, would seem all but incredible.
+
+With these few words of preliminary explanation, I shall proceed to
+state the particulars of the last scene in this strange series of
+incidents. It was almost two o'clock one winter's night, and Barton was,
+as usual at that hour, in his bed; the servant we have mentioned
+occupied a smaller bed in the same room, and a light was burning. The
+man was on a sudden aroused by his master, who said--
+
+"I can't get it out of my head that that accursed bird has got out
+somehow, and is lurking in some corner of the room. I have been dreaming
+about him. Get up, Smith, and look about; search for him. Such hateful
+dreams!"
+
+The servant rose, and examined the chamber, and while engaged in so
+doing, he heard the well-known sound, more like a long-drawn gasp than a
+hiss, with which these birds from their secret haunts affright the quiet
+of the night.
+
+This ghostly indication of its proximity--for the sound proceeded from
+the passage upon which Barton's chamber-door opened--determined the
+search of the servant, who, opening the door, proceeded a step or two
+forward for the purpose of driving the bird away. He had however, hardly
+entered the lobby, when the door behind him slowly swung to under the
+impulse, as it seemed, of some gentle current of air; but as
+immediately over the door there was a kind of window, intended in the
+day time to aid in lighting the passage, and through which at present
+the rays of the candle were issuing, the valet could see quite enough
+for his purpose.
+
+As he advanced he heard his master--who, lying in a well-curtained bed,
+had not, as it seemed, perceived his exit from the room--call him by
+name, and direct him to place the candle on the table by his bed. The
+servant, who was now some way in the long passage, and not liking to
+raise his voice for the purpose of replying, lest he should startle the
+sleeping inmates of the house, began to walk hurriedly and softly back
+again, when, to his amazement, he heard a voice in the interior of the
+chamber answering calmly, and actually saw, through the window which
+over-topped the door, that the light was slowly shifting, as if carried
+across the room in answer to his master's call. Palsied by a feeling
+akin to terror, yet not unmingled with curiosity, he stood breathless
+and listening at the threshold, unable to summon resolution to push open
+the door and enter. Then came a rustling of the curtains, and a sound
+like that of one who in a low voice hushes a child to rest, in the midst
+of which he heard Barton say, in a tone of stifled horror--"Oh, God--oh,
+my God!" and repeat the same exclamation several times. Then ensued a
+silence, which again was broken by the same strange soothing sound; and
+at last there burst forth, in one swelling peal, a yell of agony so
+appalling and hideous, that, under some impulse of ungovernable horror,
+the man rushed to the door, and with his whole strength strove to force
+it open. Whether it was that, in his agitation, he had himself but
+imperfectly turned the handle, or that the door was really secured upon
+the inside, he failed to effect an entrance; and as he tugged and
+pushed, yell after yell rang louder and wilder through the chamber,
+accompanied all the while by the same hushed sounds. Actually freezing
+with terror, and scarce knowing what he did, the man turned and ran down
+the passage, wringing his hands in the extremity of horror and
+irresolution. At the stair-head he was encountered by General Montague,
+scared and eager, and just as they met the fearful sounds had ceased.
+
+"What is it? Who--where is your master?" said Montague with the
+incoherence of extreme agitation. "Has anything--for God's sake is
+anything wrong?"
+
+"Lord have mercy on us, it's all over," said the man staring wildly
+towards his master's chamber. "He's dead, sir, I'm sure he's dead."
+
+Without waiting for inquiry or explanation, Montague, closely followed
+by the servant, hurried to the chamber-door, turned the handle, and
+pushed it open. As the door yielded to his pressure, the ill-omened bird
+of which the servant had been in search, uttering its spectral warning,
+started suddenly from the far side of the bed, and flying through the
+doorway close over their heads, and extinguishing, in his passage, the
+candle which Montague carried, crashed through the skylight that
+overlooked the lobby, and sailed away into the darkness of the outer
+space.
+
+"There it is, God bless us," whispered the man, after a breathless
+pause.
+
+"Curse that bird," muttered the General, startled by the suddenness of
+the apparition, and unable to conceal his discomposure.
+
+"The candle is moved," said the man, after another breathless pause,
+pointing to the candle that still burned in the room; "see, they put it
+by the bed."
+
+"Draw the curtains, fellow, and don't stand gaping there," whispered
+Montague, sternly.
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"Hold this, then," said Montague, impatiently thrusting the candlestick
+into the servant's hand, and himself advancing to the bed-side, he drew
+the curtains apart. The light of the candle, which was still burning at
+the bedside, fell upon a figure huddled together, and half upright, at
+the head of the bed. It seemed as though it had slunk back as far as the
+solid panelling would allow, and the hands were still clutched in the
+bed-clothes.
+
+"Barton, Barton, _Barton_!" cried the General, with a strange mixture of
+awe and vehemence. He took the candle, and held it so that it shone full
+upon the face. The features were fixed, stern, and white; the jaw was
+fallen; and the sightless eyes, still open, gazed vacantly forward
+toward the front of the bed. "God Almighty! he's dead," muttered the
+General, as he looked upon this fearful spectacle. They both continued
+to gaze upon it in silence for a minute or more. "And cold, too,"
+whispered Montague, withdrawing his hand from that of the dead man.
+
+"And see, see--may I never have life, sir," added the man, after a
+another pause, with a shudder, "but there was something else on the bed
+with him. Look there--look there--see that, sir."
+
+As the man thus spoke, he pointed to a deep indenture, as if caused by a
+heavy pressure, near the foot of the bed.
+
+Montague was silent.
+
+"Come, sir, come away, for God's sake," whispered the man, drawing close
+up to him, and holding fast by his arm, while he glanced fearfully
+round; "what good can be done here now--come away, for God's sake!"
+
+At this moment they heard the steps of more than one approaching, and
+Montague, hastily desiring the servant to arrest their progress,
+endeavoured to loose the rigid gripe with which the fingers of the dead
+man were clutched in the bed-clothes, and drew, as well as he was able,
+the awful figure into a reclining posture; then closing the curtains
+carefully upon it, he hastened himself to meet those persons that were
+approaching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is needless to follow the personages so slightly connected with this
+narrative, into the events of their after life; it is enough to say,
+that no clue to the solution of these mysterious occurrences was ever
+after discovered; and so long an interval having now passed since the
+event which I have just described concluded this strange history, it is
+scarcely to be expected that time can throw any new lights upon its dark
+and inexplicable outline. Until the secrets of the earth shall be no
+longer hidden, therefore, these transactions must remain shrouded in
+their original obscurity.
+
+The only occurrence in Captain Barton's former life to which reference
+was ever made, as having any possible connexion with the sufferings with
+which his existence closed, and which he himself seemed to regard as
+working out a retribution for some grievous sin of his past life, was a
+circumstance which not for several years after his death was brought to
+light. The nature of this disclosure was painful to his relatives, and
+discreditable to his memory.
+
+It appeared that some six years before Captain Barton's final return to
+Dublin, he had formed, in the town of Plymouth, a guilty attachment, the
+object of which was the daughter of one of the ship's crew under his
+command. The father had visited the frailty of his unhappy child with
+extreme harshness, and even brutality, and it was said that she had
+died heart-broken. Presuming upon Barton's implication in her guilt,
+this man had conducted himself toward him with marked insolence, and
+Barton retaliated this, and what he resented with still more exasperated
+bitterness--his treatment of the unfortunate girl--by a systematic
+exercise of those terrible and arbitrary severities which the
+regulations of the navy placed at the command of those who are
+responsible for its discipline. The man had at length made his escape,
+while the vessel was in port at Naples, but died, as it was said, in an
+hospital in that town, of the wounds inflicted in one of his recent and
+sanguinary punishments.
+
+Whether these circumstances in reality bear, or not, upon the
+occurrences of Barton's after-life, it is, of course, impossible to say.
+It seems, however more than probable that they were at least, in his own
+mind, closely associated with them. But however the truth may be, as to
+the origin and motives of this mysterious persecution, there can be no
+doubt that, with respect to the agencies by which it was accomplished,
+absolute and impenetrable mystery is like to prevail until the day of
+doom.
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR.
+
+The preceding narrative is given in the _ipsissima verba_ of the good
+old clergyman, under whose hand it was delivered to Doctor Hesselius.
+Notwithstanding the occasional stiffness and redundancy of his
+sentences, I thought it better to reserve to myself the power of
+assuring the reader, that in handing to the printer, the M.S. of a
+statement so marvellous, the Editor has not altered one letter of the
+original text.--[_Ed. Papers of Dr. Hesselius._]
+
+
+
+
+MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+On this case, Doctor Hesselius has inscribed nothing more than the
+words, "Harman's Report," and a simple reference to his own
+extraordinary Essay on "the Interior Sense, and the Conditions of the
+opening thereof."
+
+The reference is to Vol. I. Section 317, Note Z'a. The note to which
+reference is thus made, simply says: "There are two accounts of the
+remarkable case of the Honourable Mr. Justice Harbottle, one furnished
+to me by Mrs. Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells (June, 1805); the other at a
+much later date, by Anthony Harman, Esq. I much prefer the former; in
+the first place, because it is minute and detailed, and written, it
+seems to me, with more caution and knowledge; and in the next, because
+the letters from Doctor Hedstone, which are embodied in it, furnish
+matter of the highest value to a right apprehension of the nature of the
+case. It was one of the best declared cases of an opening of the
+interior sense, which I have met with. It was affected, too, by the
+phenomenon, which occurs so frequently as to indicate a law of these
+eccentric conditions; that is to say, it exhibited, what I may term, the
+contagious character of this sort of intrusion of the spirit-world upon
+the proper domain of matter. So soon as the spirit-action has
+established itself in the case of one patient, its developed energy
+begins to radiate, more or less effectually, upon others. The interior
+vision of the child was opened; as was, also, that of its mother, Mrs.
+Pyneweck; and both the interior vision and hearing of the scullery-maid,
+were opened on the same occasion. After-appearances are the result of
+the law explained in Vol. II. Section 17 to 49. The common centre of
+association, simultaneously recalled, unites, or _re_unites, as the case
+may be, for a period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The _maximum_
+will extend to days, the _minimum_ is little more than a second. We see
+the operation of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of
+lunacy, of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and
+painful character, though unattended by incapacity of business."
+
+The memorandum of the case of Judge Harbottle, which was written by Mrs.
+Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells, which Doctor Hesselius thought the better of
+the two, I have been unable to discover among his papers. I found in
+his escritoire a note to the effect that he had lent the Report of Judge
+Harbottle's case, written by Mrs. Trimmer to Doctor F. Heyne. To that
+learned and able gentleman accordingly I wrote, and received from him,
+in his reply, which was full of alarms and regrets on account of the
+uncertain safety of that "valuable MS.," a line written long since by
+Doctor Hesselius, which completely exonerated him, inasmuch as it
+acknowledged the safe return of the papers. The Narrative of Mr. Harman,
+is, therefore, the only one available for this collection. The late Dr.
+Hesselius, in another passage of the note that I have cited, says, "As
+to the facts (non-medical) of the case, the narrative of Mr. Harman
+exactly tallies with that furnished by Mrs. Trimmer." The strictly
+scientific view of the case would scarcely interest the popular reader;
+and, possibly, for the purposes of this selection, I should, even had I
+both papers to choose between, have preferred that of Mr. Harman, which
+is given, in full, in the following pages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE JUDGE'S HOUSE.
+
+
+Thirty years ago, an elderly man, to whom I paid quarterly a small
+annuity charged on some property of mine, came on the quarter-day to
+receive it. He was a dry, sad, quiet man, who had known better days, and
+had always maintained an unexceptionable character. No better authority
+could be imagined for a ghost story.
+
+He told me one, though with a manifest reluctance; he was drawn into the
+narration by his choosing to explain what I should not have remarked,
+that he had called two days earlier than that week after the strict day
+of payment, which he had usually allowed to elapse. His reason was a
+sudden determination to change his lodgings, and the consequent
+necessity of paying his rent a little before it was due.
+
+He lodged in a dark street in Westminster, in a spacious old house, very
+warm, being wainscoted from top to bottom, and furnished with no undue
+abundance of windows, and those fitted with thick sashes and small
+panes.
+
+This house was, as the bills upon the windows testified, offered to be
+sold or let. But no one seemed to care to look at it.
+
+A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large, steady,
+alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to read what you might
+have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed,
+was in charge of it, with a solitary 'maid-of-all-work' under her
+command. My poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of
+their extraordinary cheapness. He had occupied them for nearly a year
+without the slightest disturbance, and was the only tenant, under rent,
+in the house. He had two rooms; a sitting-room, and a bedroom with a
+closet opening from it, in which he kept his books and papers locked up.
+He had gone to his bed, having also locked the outer door. Unable to
+sleep, he had lighted a candle, and after having read for a time, had
+laid the book beside him. He heard the old clock at the stair-head
+strike one; and very shortly after, to his alarm, he saw the
+closet-door, which he thought he had locked, open stealthily, and a
+slight dark man, particularly sinister, and somewhere about fifty,
+dressed in mourning of a very antique fashion, such a suit as we see in
+Hogarth, entered the room on tip-toe. He was followed by an elder man,
+stout, and blotched with scurvy, and whose features, fixed as a
+corpse's, were stamped with dreadful force with a character of
+sensuality and villany.
+
+This old man wore a flowered-silk dressing-gown and ruffles, and he
+remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet,
+such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress.
+
+This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand a coil of
+rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the
+foot of his bed, from the closet-door at the farther end of the room, at
+the left, near the window, to the door opening upon the lobby, close to
+the bed's head, at his right.
+
+He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so
+near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again,
+no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to
+enter it again alone, even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of
+the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning
+fast locked, as he had left them before going to bed.
+
+In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared the least
+conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but walked as
+living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration on the
+floor as they crossed it. He so obviously suffered from speaking about
+the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions.
+
+There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very
+singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much
+my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information
+which I knew he could give me. He had himself more than once pointed out
+that old house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the
+strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater detail.
+
+His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey its substance.
+
+Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars about the
+closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle, one of the judges of
+the Court of Common Pleas. You refer, of course, to the extraordinary
+occurrences that made that period of his life long after a theme for
+'winter tales' and metaphysical speculation. I happen to know perhaps
+more than any other man living of those mysterious particulars.
+
+The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more than thirty years
+ago, I examined for the last time. During the years that have passed
+since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions,
+has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it
+stood. If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I
+should have no difficulty about naming the street in which it stood. As
+what I have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting
+value, and as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being
+silent on that particular point.
+
+How old the house was, I can't tell. People said it was built by Roger
+Harbottle, a Turkey merchant, in the reign of King James I. I am not a
+good opinion upon such questions; but having been in it, though in its
+forlorn and deserted state. I can tell you in a general way what it was
+like. It was built of dark-red brick, and the door and windows were
+faced with stone that had turned yellow by time. It receded some feet
+from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a florid and
+fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent to
+the hall-door, in which were fixed, under a file of lamps, among scrolls
+and twisted leaves, two immense 'extinguishers,' like the conical caps
+of fairies, into which, in old times, the footmen used to thrust their
+flambeaux when their chairs or coaches had set down their great people,
+in the hall or at the steps, as the case might be. That hall is panelled
+up to the ceiling, and has a large fire-place. Two or three stately old
+rooms open from it at each side. The windows of these are tall, with
+many small panes. Passing through the arch at the back of the hall, you
+come upon the wide and heavy well-staircase. There is a back staircase
+also. The mansion is large, and has not as much light, by any means, in
+proportion to its extent, as modern houses enjoy. When I saw it, it had
+long been untenanted, and had the gloomy reputation beside of a haunted
+house. Cobwebs floated from the ceilings or spanned the corners of the
+cornices, and dust lay thick over everything. The windows were stained
+with the dust and rain of fifty years, and darkness had thus grown
+darker.
+
+When I made it my first visit, it was in company with my father, when I
+was still a boy, in the year 1808. I was about twelve years old, and my
+imagination impressible, as it always is at that age. I looked about me
+with great awe. I was here in the very centre and scene of those
+occurrences which I had heard recounted at the fire-side at home, with
+so delightful a horror.
+
+My father was an old bachelor of nearly sixty when he married. He had,
+when a child, seen Judge Harbottle on the bench in his robes and wig a
+dozen times at least before his death, which took place in 1748, and his
+appearance made a powerful and unpleasant impression, not only on his
+imagination, but upon his nerves.
+
+The Judge was at that time a man of some sixty-seven years. He had a
+great mulberry-coloured face, a big, carbuncled nose, fierce eyes, and a
+grim and brutal mouth. My father, who was young at the time, thought it
+the most formidable face he had ever seen; for there were evidences of
+intellectual power in the formation and lines of the forehead. His voice
+was loud and harsh, and gave effect to the sarcasm which was his
+habitual weapon on the bench.
+
+This old gentleman had the reputation of being about the wickedest man
+in England. Even on the bench he now and then showed his scorn of
+opinion. He had carried cases his own way, it was said, in spite of
+counsel, authorities, and even of juries, by a sort of cajolery,
+violence, and bamboozling, that somehow confused and overpowered
+resistance. He had never actually committed himself; he was too cunning
+to do that. He had the character of being, however, a dangerous and
+unscrupulous judge; but his character did not trouble him. The
+associates he chose for his hours of relaxation cared as little as he
+did about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MR. PETERS.
+
+
+One night during the session of 1746 this old Judge went down in his
+chair to wait in one of the rooms of the House of Lords for the result
+of a division in which he and his order were interested.
+
+This over, he was about to return to his house close by, in his chair;
+but the night had become so soft and fine that he changed his mind, sent
+it home empty, and with two footmen, each with a flambeau, set out on
+foot in preference. Gout had made him rather a slow pedestrian. It took
+him some time to get through the two or three streets he had to pass
+before reaching his house.
+
+In one of those narrow streets of tall houses, perfectly silent at that
+hour, he overtook, slowly as he was walking, a very singular-looking old
+gentleman.
+
+He had a bottle-green coat on, with a cape to it, and large stone
+buttons, a broad-leafed low-crowned hat, from under which a big powdered
+wig escaped; he stooped very much, and supported his bending knees with
+the aid of a crutch-handled cane, and so shuffled and tottered along
+painfully.
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," said this old man in a very quavering voice,
+as the burly Judge came up with him, and he extended his hand feebly
+towards his arm.
+
+Mr. Justice Harbottle saw that the man was by no means poorly dressed,
+and his manner that of a gentleman.
+
+The Judge stopped short, and said, in his harsh peremptory tones, "Well,
+sir, how can I serve you?"
+
+"Can you direct me to Judge Harbottle's house? I have some intelligence
+of the very last importance to communicate to him."
+
+"Can you tell it before witnesses?" asked the Judge.
+
+"By no means; it must reach _his_ ear only," quavered the old man
+earnestly.
+
+"If that be so, sir, you have only to accompany me a few steps farther
+to reach my house, and obtain a private audience; for I am Judge
+Harbottle."
+
+With this invitation the infirm gentleman in the white wig complied very
+readily; and in another minute the stranger stood in what was then
+termed the front parlour of the Judge's house, _tête-à-tête_ with that
+shrewd and dangerous functionary.
+
+He had to sit down, being very much exhausted, and unable for a little
+time to speak; and then he had a fit of coughing, and after that a fit
+of gasping; and thus two or three minutes passed, during which the Judge
+dropped his roquelaure on an arm-chair, and threw his cocked-hat over
+that.
+
+The venerable pedestrian in the white wig quickly recovered his voice.
+With closed doors they remained together for some time.
+
+There were guests waiting in the drawing-rooms, and the sound of men's
+voices laughing, and then of a female voice singing to a harpsichord,
+were heard distinctly in the hall over the stairs; for old Judge
+Harbottle had arranged one of his dubious jollifications, such as might
+well make the hair of godly men's heads stand upright, for that night.
+
+This old gentleman in the powdered white wig, that rested on his stooped
+shoulders, must have had something to say that interested the Judge very
+much; for he would not have parted on easy terms with the ten minutes
+and upwards which that conference filched from the sort of revelry in
+which he most delighted, and in which he was the roaring king, and in
+some sort the tyrant also, of his company.
+
+The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judge's
+mulberry-coloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy
+yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner,
+as he bid the stranger good-night. The servant saw that the conversation
+had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened.
+
+Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his
+profane company, and his great china bowl of punch--the identical bowl
+from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this
+Judge's grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and
+hung with scrolls of lemon-peel--instead, I say, of stumping and
+clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean
+enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the
+window-pane, watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung
+stiffly to the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement.
+
+The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall
+bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels
+under excitement sometimes indulge in now-a-days, with a stamp or two of
+his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. He commanded
+the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him
+his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again
+without having ascertained where he lodged, and who he was, and all
+about him.
+
+"By ----, sirrah! if you fail me in this, you doff my livery to-night!"
+
+Forth bounced the stalwart footman, with his heavy cane under his arm,
+and skipped down the steps, and looked up and down the street after the
+singular figure, so easy to recognise.
+
+What were his adventures I shall not tell you just now.
+
+The old man, in the conference to which he had been admitted in that
+stately panelled room, had just told the Judge a very strange story. He
+might be himself a conspirator; he might possibly be crazed; or possibly
+his whole story was straight and true.
+
+The aged gentleman in the bottle-green coat, on finding himself alone
+with Mr. Justice Harbottle, had become agitated. He said,
+
+"There is, perhaps you are not aware, my lord, a prisoner in Shrewsbury
+jail, charged with having forged a bill of exchange for a hundred and
+twenty pounds, and his name is Lewis Pyneweck, a grocer of that town."
+
+"Is there?" says the Judge, who knew well that there was.
+
+"Yes, my lord," says the old man.
+
+"Then you had better say nothing to affect this case. If you do, by ----
+I'll commit you; for I'm to try it," says the Judge, with his terrible
+look and tone.
+
+"I am not going to do anything of the kind, my lord; of him or his case
+I know nothing, and care nothing. But a fact has come to my knowledge
+which it behoves you to well consider."
+
+"And what may that fact be?" inquired the Judge; "I'm in haste, sir, and
+beg you will use dispatch."
+
+"It has come to my knowledge, my lord, that a secret tribunal is in
+process of formation, the object of which is to take cognisance of the
+conduct of the judges; and first, of _your_ conduct, my lord: it is a
+wicked conspiracy."
+
+"Who are of it?" demands the Judge.
+
+"I know not a single name as yet. I know but the fact, my lord; it is
+most certainly true."
+
+"I'll have you before the Privy Council, sir," says the Judge.
+
+"That is what I most desire; but not for a day or two, my lord."
+
+"And why so?"
+
+"I have not as yet a single name, as I told your lordship; but I expect
+to have a list of the most forward men in it, and some other papers
+connected with the plot, in two or three days."
+
+"You said one or two just now."
+
+"About that time, my lord."
+
+"Is this a Jacobite plot?"
+
+"In the main I think it is, my lord."
+
+"Why, then, it is political. I have tried no State prisoners, nor am
+like to try any such. How, then, doth it concern me?"
+
+"From what I can gather, my lord, there are those in it who desire
+private revenges upon certain judges."
+
+"What do they call their cabal?"
+
+"The High Court of Appeal, my lord."
+
+"Who are you sir? What is your name?"
+
+"Hugh Peters, my lord."
+
+"That should be a Whig name?"
+
+"It is, my lord."
+
+"Where do you lodge, Mr. Peters?"
+
+"In Thames-street, my lord, over against the sign of the Three Kings."
+
+"Three Kings? Take care one be not too many for you, Mr. Peters! How
+come you, an honest Whig, as you say, to be privy to a Jacobite plot?
+Answer me that."
+
+"My lord, a person in whom I take an interest has been seduced to take a
+part in it; and being frightened at the unexpected wickedness of their
+plans, he is resolved to become an informer for the Crown."
+
+"He resolves like a wise man, sir. What does he say of the persons? Who
+are in the plot? Doth he know them?"
+
+"Only two, my lord; but he will be introduced to the club in a few days,
+and he will then have a list, and more exact information of their plans,
+and above all of their oaths, and their hours and places of meeting,
+with which he wishes to be acquainted before they can have any
+suspicions of his intentions. And being so informed, to whom, think you,
+my lord, had he best go then?"
+
+"To the king's attorney-general straight. But you say this concerns me,
+sir, in particular? How about this prisoner, Lewis Pyneweck? Is he one
+of them?"
+
+"I can't tell, my lord; but for some reason, it is thought your lordship
+will be well advised if you try him not. For if you do, it is feared
+'twill shorten your days."
+
+"So far as I can learn, Mr. Peters, this business smells pretty strong
+of blood and treason. The king's attorney-general will know how to deal
+with it. When shall I see you again, sir?"
+
+"If you give me leave, my lord, either before your lordship's court
+sits, or after it rises, to-morrow. I should like to come and tell your
+lordship what has passed."
+
+"Do so, Mr. Peters, at nine o'clock to-morrow morning. And see you play
+me no trick, sir, in this matter; if you do, by ----, sir, I'll lay you
+by the heels!"
+
+"You need fear no trick from me, my lord; had I not wished to serve you,
+and acquit my own conscience, I never would have come all this way to
+talk with your lordship."
+
+"I'm willing to believe you, Mr. Peters; I'm willing to believe you,
+sir."
+
+And upon this they parted.
+
+"He has either painted his face, or he is consumedly sick," thought the
+old Judge.
+
+The light had shone more effectually upon his features as he turned to
+leave the room with a low bow, and they looked, he fancied, unnaturally
+chalky.
+
+"D--- him!" said the judge ungraciously, as he began to scale the
+stairs: "he has half-spoiled my supper."
+
+But if he had, no one but the Judge himself perceived it, and the
+evidence was all, as any one might perceive, the other way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LEWIS PYNEWECK.
+
+
+In the meantime, the footman dispatched in pursuit of Mr. Peters
+speedily overtook that feeble gentleman. The old man stopped when he
+heard the sound of pursuing steps, but any alarms that may have crossed
+his mind seemed to disappear on his recognising the livery. He very
+gratefully accepted the proferred assistance, and placed his tremulous
+arm within the servant's for support. They had not gone far, however,
+when the old man stopped suddenly, saying,
+
+"Dear me! as I live, I have dropped it. You heard it fall. My eyes, I
+fear, won't serve me, and I'm unable to stoop low enough; but if you
+will look, you shall have half the find. It is a guinea; I carried it in
+my glove."
+
+The street was silent and deserted. The footman had hardly descended to
+what he termed his "hunkers," and begun to search the pavement about the
+spot which the old man indicated, when Mr. Peters, who seemed very much
+exhausted, and breathed with difficulty, struck him a violent blow, from
+above, over the back of the head with a heavy instrument, and then
+another; and leaving him bleeding and senseless in the gutter, ran like
+a lamp-lighter down a lane to the right, and was gone.
+
+When, an hour later, the watchman brought the man in livery home, still
+stupid and covered with blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant
+roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for
+taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective
+of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the cart's
+tail, and the hangman's lash.
+
+Notwithstanding this demonstration, the Judge was pleased. It was a
+disguised "affidavit man," or footpad, no doubt, who had been employed
+to frighten him. The trick had fallen through.
+
+A "court of appeal," such as the false Hugh Peters had indicated, with
+assassination for its sanction, would be an uncomfortable institution
+for a "hanging judge" like the Honourable Justice Harbottle. That
+sarcastic and ferocious administrator of the criminal code of England,
+at that time a rather pharisaical, bloody, and heinous system of
+justice, had reasons of his own for choosing to try that very Lewis
+Pyneweck, on whose behalf this audacious trick was devised. Try him he
+would. No man living should take that morsel out of his mouth.
+
+Of Lewis Pyneweck of course, so far as the outer world could see, he
+knew nothing. He would try him after his fashion, without fear, favour,
+or affection.
+
+But did he not remember a certain thin man, dressed in mourning, in
+whose house, in Shrewsbury, the Judge's lodgings used to be, until a
+scandal of his ill-treating his wife came suddenly to light? A grocer
+with a demure look, a soft step, and a lean face as dark as mahogany,
+with a nose sharp and long, standing ever so little awry, and a pair of
+dark steady brown eyes under thinly-traced black brows--a man whose thin
+lips wore always a faint unpleasant smile.
+
+Had not that scoundrel an account to settle with the Judge? had he not
+been troublesome lately? and was not his name Lewis Pyneweck, some time
+grocer in Shrewsbury, and now prisoner in the jail of that town?
+
+The reader may take it, if he pleases, as a sign that Judge Harbottle
+was a good Christian, that he suffered nothing ever from remorse. That
+was undoubtedly true. He had nevertheless done this grocer, forger, what
+you will, some five or six years before, a grievous wrong; but it was
+not that, but a possible scandal, and possible complications, that
+troubled the learned Judge now.
+
+Did he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the
+dock, the chances must be at least ninety-nine out of a hundred that he
+is guilty.
+
+A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep
+the high-roads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the
+man to make the evil-disposed quiver, and to refresh the world with
+showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of
+the ancient saw he loved to quote:
+
+     Foolish pity
+     Ruins a city.
+
+In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man
+accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read "villain"
+written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try
+him, and no one else should.
+
+A saucy-looking woman, still handsome, in a mob-cap gay with blue
+ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too
+fine for the Judge's housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped
+into his study next morning, and, seeing the Judge alone, stepped in.
+
+"Here's another letter from him, come by the post this morning. Can't
+you do nothing for him?" she said wheedlingly, with her arm over his
+neck, and her delicate finger and thumb fiddling with the lobe of his
+purple ear.
+
+"I'll try," said Judge Harbottle, not raising his eyes from the paper he
+was reading.
+
+"I knew you'd do what I asked you," she said.
+
+The Judge clapt his gouty claw over his heart, and made her an ironical
+bow.
+
+"What," she asked, "will you do?"
+
+"Hang him," said the Judge with a chuckle.
+
+"You don't mean to; no, you don't, my little man," said she, surveying
+herself in a mirror on the wall.
+
+"I'm d----d but I think you're falling in love with your husband at
+last!" said Judge Harbottle.
+
+"I'm blest but I think you're growing jealous of him," replied the lady
+with a laugh. "But no; he was always a bad one to me; I've done with him
+long ago."
+
+"And he with you, by George! When he took your fortune and your spoons
+and your ear-rings, he had all he wanted of you. He drove you from his
+house; and when he discovered you had made yourself comfortable, and
+found a good situation, he'd have taken your guineas and your silver and
+your ear-rings over again, and then allowed you half-a-dozen years more
+to make a new harvest for his mill. You don't wish him good; if you say
+you do, you lie."
+
+She laughed a wicked saucy laugh, and gave the terrible Rhadamanthus a
+playful tap on the chops.
+
+"He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor," she said, while her
+eyes wandered over the pictures on the wall, and back again to the
+looking-glass; and certainly she did not look as if his jeopardy
+troubled her very much.
+
+"Confound his impudence, the _scoundrel_!" thundered the old Judge,
+throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to do _in furore_ on the
+bench, and the lines of his mouth looked brutal, and his eyes ready to
+leap from their sockets. "If you answer his letter from my house to
+please yourself, you'll write your next from somebody else's to please
+me. You understand, my pretty witch, I'll not be pestered. Come, no
+pouting; whimpering won't do. You don't care a brass farthing for the
+villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of
+Mother Carey's chickens; and where you come, the storm is up. Get you
+gone, baggage! get you _gone_!" he repeated with a stamp; for a knock at
+the hall-door made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable.
+
+I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again.
+The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he
+laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the
+very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark
+front parlour was often in his memory.
+
+His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints and such
+disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the features of this
+false old man, who had turned out too hard for his tall footman, were
+identical with those of Lewis Pyneweck.
+
+Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown solicitor, and
+tell him that there was a man in town who bore a wonderful resemblance
+to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make
+inquiry through the post forthwith whether any one was personating
+Pyneweck in prison, and whether he had thus or otherwise made his
+escape.
+
+The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his identity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+INTERRUPTION IN COURT.
+
+
+In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time the judges
+were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those days, and newspapers,
+like the wagons and stage-coaches, took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck,
+in the Judge's house, with a diminished household--the greater part of
+the Judge's servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding
+circuit, and travelled in his coach in state--kept house rather
+solitarily at home.
+
+In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuries--some of them,
+inflicted by herself, enormous--in spite of a married life of spited
+bickerings--a life in which there seemed no love or liking or
+forbearance, for years--now that Pyneweck stood in near danger of death,
+something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in
+Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate.
+She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even a
+fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so
+powerfully.
+
+She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take place. She
+could not get it out of her head for a minute; she felt faint as it drew
+towards evening.
+
+Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial must be over
+by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news
+was long delayed. She wished the floods would last for ever. It was
+dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and
+that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided; dreadful to
+know that they must subside and the news come at last.
+
+She had some vague trust in the Judge's good-nature, and much in the
+resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he
+wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled
+support.
+
+At last the news did come--a long arrear all in a gush: a letter from a
+female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the
+Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with
+great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the
+Shrewsbury Assizes in the _Morning Advertiser_. Like an impatient reader
+of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the
+list of the executions.
+
+Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was
+this line:
+
+"Lewis Pyneweck--forgery."
+
+She had to read it half-a-dozen times over before she was sure she
+understood it. Here was the paragraph:
+
+     "_Sentence, Death_--7.
+
+     "Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:
+
+     "Thomas Primer, _alias_ Duck--highway robbery.
+
+     "Flora Guy--stealing to the value of 11_s._ _6d._
+
+     "Arthur Pounden--burglary.
+
+     "Matilda Mummery--riot.
+
+     "Lewis Pyneweck--forgery, bill of exchange."
+
+And when she reached this, she read it over and over, feeling very cold
+and sick. This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs.
+Carwell--Carwell being her maiden name, which she had resumed.
+
+No one in the house except its master knew her history. Her introduction
+had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted
+between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine.
+
+Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little girl,
+hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in
+her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what
+she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not
+able to speak. She held the child before her, and looked in the little
+girl's wondering face, and burst into tears of horror.
+
+She thought, the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he could. For a
+time she was furious with him; and hugged and kissed her bewildered
+little girl, who returned her gaze with large round eyes.
+
+That little girl had lost her father, and knew nothing of the matter.
+She had been always told that her father was dead long ago.
+
+A woman, coarse, uneducated, vain, and violent, does not reason, or even
+feel, very distinctly; but in these tears of consternation were mingling
+a self-upbraiding. She felt afraid of that little child.
+
+But Mrs. Carwell was a person who lived not upon sentiment, but upon
+beef and pudding; she consoled herself with punch; she did not trouble
+herself long even with resentments; she was a gross and material person,
+and could not mourn over the irrevocable for more than a limited number
+of hours, even if she would.
+
+Judge Harbottle was soon in London again. Except the gout, this savage
+old epicurean never knew a day's sickness. He laughed and coaxed and
+bullied away the young woman's faint upbraidings, and in a little time
+Lewis Pyneweck troubled her no more; and the Judge secretly chuckled
+over the perfectly fair removal of a bore, who might have grown little
+by little into something very like a tyrant.
+
+It was the lot of the Judge whose adventures I am now recounting to try
+criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after his return. He had
+commenced his charge to the jury in a case of forgery, and was, after
+his wont, thundering dead against the prisoner, with many a hard
+aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence,
+and, instead of looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at
+some person in the body of the court.
+
+Among the persons of small importance who stand and listen at the sides
+was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean
+figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just
+handed a letter to the crier, before he caught the Judge's eye.
+
+That Judge descried, to his amazement, the features of Lewis Pyneweck.
+He has the usual faint thin-lipped smile; and with his blue chin raised
+in air, and as it seemed quite unconscious of the distinguished notice
+he has attracted, he was stretching his low cravat with his crooked
+fingers, while he slowly turned his head from side to side--a process
+which enabled the Judge to see distinctly a stripe of swollen blue round
+his neck, which indicated, he thought, the grip of the rope.
+
+This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step, from which he
+could better see the court. He now stepped down, and the Judge lost
+sight of him.
+
+His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in
+which this man had vanished. He turned to the tipstaff. His first effort
+to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared his throat, and told the astounded
+official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court.
+
+"He's but this moment gone down _there_. Bring him in custody before me,
+within ten minutes' time, or I'll strip your gown from your shoulders
+and fine the sheriff!" he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the
+court in search of the functionary.
+
+Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which
+Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared
+notes. Not one had seen any one making a disturbance. They asked one
+another if the Judge was losing his head.
+
+Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his charge a great
+deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court
+with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence
+to see the prisoner hanged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CALEB SEARCHER.
+
+
+The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he
+would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read
+the direction:
+
+    _To the Honourable_
+          _The Lord Justice_
+              _Elijah Harbottle,_
+
+    _One of his Majesty's Justices of_
+      _the Honourable Court of Common Pleas._
+
+It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.
+
+When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his
+coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk
+dressing-gown; and then he found its contents to be a closely-written
+letter, in a clerk's hand, and an enclosure in 'secretary hand,' as I
+believe the angular scrivinary of law-writings in those days was termed,
+engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter
+said:
+
+
+          "Mr. Justice Harbottle,--My Lord,
+
+"I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in
+order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill
+hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for
+the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully
+executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the--the day of ----
+last, by reason of the wilful perversion of the evidence, and the undue
+pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of
+evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all
+which the promoter of the prosecution of the said indictment, before the
+High Court of Appeal, hath lost his life.
+
+"And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther ordered to acquaint
+your lordship is fixed for the 10th day of ---- next ensuing, by the
+right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice Twofold, of the court aforesaid,
+to wit, the High Court of Appeal, on which day it will most certainly
+take place. And I am farther to acquaint your lordship, to prevent any
+surprise or miscarriage, that your case stands first for the said day,
+and that the said High Court of Appeal sits day and night, and never
+rises; and herewith, by order of the said court, I furnish your lordship
+with a copy (extract) of the record in this case, except of the
+indictment, whereof, notwithstanding, the substance and effect is
+supplied to your lordship in this Notice. And farther I am to inform
+you, that in case the jury then to try your lordship should find you
+guilty, the right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice will, in passing
+sentence of death upon you, fix the day of execution for the 10th day of
+----, being one calendar month from the day of your trial."
+
+It was signed by "CALEB SEARCHER,
+
+     "Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the
+        "Kingdom of Life and Death."
+
+
+The Judge glanced through the parchment.
+
+"'Sblood! Do they think a man like me is to be bamboozled by their
+buffoonery?"
+
+The Judge's coarse features were wrung into one of his sneers; but he
+was pale. Possibly, after all, there was a conspiracy on foot. It was
+queer. Did they mean to pistol him in his carriage? or did they only
+aim at frightening him?
+
+Judge Harbottle had more than enough of animal courage. He was not
+afraid of highwaymen, and he had fought more than his share of duels,
+being a foul-mouthed advocate while he held briefs at the bar. No one
+questioned his fighting qualities. But with respect to this particular
+case of Pyneweck, he lived in a house of glass. Was there not his
+pretty, dark-eyed, over-dressed housekeeper, Mrs. Flora Carwell? Very
+easy for people who knew Shrewsbury to identify Mrs. Pyneweck, if once
+put upon the scent; and had he not stormed and worked hard in that case?
+Had he not made it hard sailing for the prisoner? Did he not know very
+well what the bar thought of it? It would be the worst scandal that ever
+blasted judge.
+
+So much there was intimidating in the matter, but nothing more. The
+Judge was a little bit gloomy for a day or two after, and more testy
+with every one than usual.
+
+He locked up the papers; and about a week after he asked his
+housekeeper, one day, in the library:
+
+"Had your husband never a brother?"
+
+Mrs. Carwell squalled on this sudden introduction of the funereal topic,
+and cried exemplary "piggins full," as the Judge used pleasantly to say.
+But he was in no mood for trifling now, and he said sternly:
+
+"Come, madam! this wearies me. Do it another time; and give me an answer
+to my question." So she did.
+
+Pyneweck had no brother living. He once had one; but he died in Jamaica.
+
+"How do you know he is dead?" asked the Judge.
+
+"Because he told me so."
+
+"Not the dead man?"
+
+"Pyneweck told me so."
+
+"Is that all?" sneered the Judge.
+
+He pondered this matter; and time went on. The Judge was growing a
+little morose, and less enjoying. The subject struck nearer to his
+thoughts than he fancied it could have done. But so it is with most
+undivulged vexations, and there was no one to whom he could tell this
+one.
+
+It was now the ninth; and Mr. Justice Harbottle was glad. He knew
+nothing would come of it. Still it bothered him; and to-morrow would see
+it well over.
+
+[What of the paper, I have cited? No one saw it during his life; no one,
+after his death. He spoke of it to Dr. Hedstone; and what purported to
+be "a copy," in the old Judge's hand-writing, was found. The original
+was nowhere. Was it a copy of an illusion, incident to brain disease?
+Such is my belief.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ARRESTED.
+
+
+Judge Harbottle went this night to the play at Drury Lane. He was one of
+those old fellows who care nothing for late hours, and occasional
+knocking about in pursuit of pleasure. He had appointed with two cronies
+of Lincoln's Inn to come home in his coach with him to sup after the
+play.
+
+They were not in his box, but were to meet him near the entrance, and to
+get into his carriage there; and Mr. Justice Harbottle, who hated
+waiting, was looking a little impatiently from the window.
+
+The Judge yawned.
+
+He told the footman to watch for Counsellor Thavies and Counsellor
+Beller, who were coming; and, with another yawn, he laid his cocked-hat
+on his knees, closed his eyes, leaned back in his corner, wrapped his
+mantle closer about him, and began to think of pretty Mrs. Abington.
+
+And being a man who could sleep like a sailor, at a moment's notice, he
+was thinking of taking a nap. Those fellows had no business to keep a
+judge waiting.
+
+He heard their voices now. Those rake-hell counsellors were laughing,
+and bantering, and sparring after their wont. The carriage swayed and
+jerked, as one got in, and then again as the other followed. The door
+clapped, and the coach was now jogging and rumbling over the pavement.
+The Judge was a little bit sulky. He did not care to sit up and open his
+eyes. Let them suppose he was asleep. He heard them laugh with more
+malice than good-humour, he thought, as they observed it. He would give
+them a d----d hard knock or two when they got to his door, and till then
+he would counterfeit his nap.
+
+The clocks were chiming twelve. Beller and Thavies were silent as
+tombstones. They were generally loquacious and merry rascals.
+
+The Judge suddenly felt himself roughly seized and thrust from his
+corner into the middle of the seat, and opening his eyes, instantly he
+found himself between his two companions.
+
+Before he could blurt out the oath that was at his lips, he saw that
+they were two strangers--evil-looking fellows, each with a pistol in
+his hand, and dressed like Bow Street officers.
+
+The Judge clutched at the check-string. The coach pulled up. He stared
+about him. They were not among houses; but through the windows, under a
+broad moonlight, he saw a black moor stretching lifelessly from right to
+left, with rotting trees, pointing fantastic branches in the air,
+standing here and there in groups, as if they held up their arms and
+twigs like fingers, in horrible glee at the Judge's coming.
+
+A footman came to the window. He knew his long face and sunken eyes. He
+knew it was Dingly Chuff, fifteen years ago a footman in his service,
+whom he had turned off at a moment's notice, in a burst of jealousy, and
+indicted for a missing spoon. The man had died in prison of the
+jail-fever.
+
+The Judge drew back in utter amazement. His armed companions signed
+mutely; and they were again gliding over this unknown moor.
+
+The bloated and gouty old man, in his horror, considered the question of
+resistance. But his athletic days were long over. This moor was a
+desert. There was no help to be had. He was in the hands of strange
+servants, even if his recognition turned out to be a delusion, and they
+were under the command of his captors. There was nothing for it but
+submission, for the present.
+
+Suddenly the coach was brought nearly to a standstill, so that the
+prisoner saw an ominous sight from the window.
+
+It was a gigantic gallows beside the road; it stood three-sided, and
+from each of its three broad beams at top depended in chains some eight
+or ten bodies, from several of which the cere-clothes had dropped away,
+leaving the skeletons swinging lightly by their chains. A tall ladder
+reached to the summit of the structure, and on the peat beneath lay
+bones.
+
+On top of the dark transverse beam facing the road, from which, as from
+the other two completing the triangle of death, dangled a row of these
+unfortunates in chains, a hang-man, with a pipe in his mouth, much as we
+see him in the famous print of the 'Idle Apprentice,' though here his
+perch was ever so much higher, was reclining at his ease and listlessly
+shying bones, from a little heap at his elbow, at the skeletons that
+hung round, bringing down now a rib or two, now a hand, now half a leg.
+A long-sighted man could have discerned that he was a dark fellow, lean;
+and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over
+which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin
+were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque.
+
+This fellow took his pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up,
+and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the
+air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering
+over a gibbet, "A rope for Judge Harbottle!"
+
+The coach was now driving on at its old swift pace.
+
+So high a gallows as that, the Judge had never, even in his most
+hilarious moments, dreamed of. He thought he must be raving. And the
+dead footman! He shook his ears and strained his eyelids; but if he was
+dreaming, he was unable to awake himself.
+
+There was no good in threatening these scoundrels. A _brutum fulmen_
+might bring a real one on his head.
+
+Any submission to get out of their hands; and then heaven and earth he
+would move to unearth and hunt them down.
+
+Suddenly they drove round a corner of a vast white building, and under a
+_porte-cochère_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+CHIEF JUSTICE TWOFOLD.
+
+
+The Judge found himself in a corridor lighted with dingy oil-lamps, the
+walls of bare stone; it looked like a passage in a prison. His guards
+placed him in the hands of other people. Here and there he saw bony and
+gigantic soldiers passing to and fro, with muskets over their shoulders.
+They looked straight before them, grinding their teeth, in bleak fury,
+with no noise but the clank of their shoes. He saw these by glimpses,
+round corners, and at the ends of passages, but he did not actually pass
+them by.
+
+And now, passing under a narrow doorway, he found himself in the dock,
+confronting a judge in his scarlet robes, in a large court-house. There
+was nothing to elevate this temple of Themis above its vulgar kind
+elsewhere. Dingy enough it looked, in spite of candles lighted in decent
+abundance. A case had just closed, and the last juror's back was seen
+escaping through the door in the wall of the jury-box. There were some
+dozen barristers, some fiddling with pen and ink, others buried in
+briefs, some beckoning, with the plumes of their pens, to their
+attorneys, of whom there were no lack; there were clerks to-ing and
+fro-ing, and the officers of the court, and the registrar, who was
+handing up a paper to the judge; and the tipstaff, who was presenting a
+note at the end of his wand to a king's counsel over the heads of the
+crowd between. If this was the High Court of Appeal, which never rose
+day or night, it might account for the pale and jaded aspect of
+everybody in it. An air of indescribable gloom hung upon the pallid
+features of all the people here; no one ever smiled; all looked more or
+less secretly suffering.
+
+"The King against Elijah Harbottle!" shouted the officer.
+
+"Is the appellant Lewis Pyneweck in court?" asked Chief-Justice Twofold,
+in a voice of thunder, that shook the woodwork of the Court, and boomed
+down the corridors.
+
+Up stood Pyneweck from his place at the table.
+
+"Arraign the prisoner!" roared the Chief; and Judge Harbottle felt the
+pannels of the dock round him, and the floor, and the rails quiver in
+the vibrations of that tremendous voice.
+
+The prisoner, _in limine_, objected to this pretended court, as being a
+sham, and non-existent in point of law; and then, that, even if it were
+a court constituted by law, (the Judge was growing dazed), it had not
+and could not have any jurisdiction to try him for his conduct on the
+bench.
+
+Whereupon the chief-justice laughed suddenly, and every one in court,
+turning round upon the prisoner, laughed also, till the laugh grew and
+roared all round like a deafening acclamation; he saw nothing but
+glittering eyes and teeth, a universal stare and grin; but though all
+the voices laughed, not a single face of all those that concentrated
+their gaze upon him looked like a laughing face. The mirth subsided as
+suddenly as it began.
+
+The indictment was read. Judge Harbottle actually pleaded! He pleaded
+"Not guilty." A jury were sworn. The trial proceeded. Judge Harbottle
+was bewildered.
+
+This could not be real. He must be either mad, or _going_ mad, he
+thought.
+
+One thing could not fail to strike even him. This Chief-Justice Twofold,
+who was knocking him about at every turn with sneer and gibe, and
+roaring him down with his tremendous voice, was a dilated effigy of
+himself; an image of Mr. Justice Harbottle, at least double his size,
+and with all his fierce colouring, and his ferocity of eye and visage,
+enhanced awfully.
+
+Nothing the prisoner could argue, cite, or state was permitted to retard
+for a moment the march of the case towards its catastrophe.
+
+The chief-justice seemed to feel his power over the jury, and to exult
+and riot in the display of it. He glared at them, he nodded to them; he
+seemed to have established an understanding with them. The lights were
+faint in that part of the court. The jurors were mere shadows, sitting
+in rows; the prisoner could see a dozen pair of white eyes shining,
+coldly, out of the darkness; and whenever the judge in his charge, which
+was contemptuously brief, nodded and grinned and gibed, the prisoner
+could see, in the obscurity, by the dip of all these rows of eyes
+together, that the jury nodded in acquiescence.
+
+And now the charge was over, the huge chief-justice leaned back panting
+and gloating on the prisoner. Every one in the court turned about, and
+gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jury-box
+where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the
+general stillness like a prolonged "hiss-s-s!" was heard; and then, in
+answer to the challenge of the officer, "How say you, gentlemen of the
+jury, guilty or not guilty?" came in a melancholy voice the finding,
+"Guilty."
+
+The place seemed to the eyes of the prisoner to grow gradually darker
+and darker, till he could discern nothing distinctly but the lumen of
+the eyes that were turned upon him from every bench and side and corner
+and gallery of the building. The prisoner doubtless thought that he had
+quite enough to say, and conclusive, why sentence of death should not be
+pronounced upon him; but the lord chief-justice puffed it contemptuously
+away, like so much smoke, and proceeded to pass sentence of death upon
+the prisoner, having named the 10th of the ensuing month for his
+execution.
+
+Before he had recovered the stun of this ominous farce, in obedience to
+the mandate, 'Remove the prisoner,' he was led from the dock. The lamps
+seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoal-fires
+here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of the
+corridors through which he passed. The stones that composed them looked
+now enormous, cracked and unhewn.
+
+He came into a vaulted smithy, where two men, naked to the waist, with
+heads like bulls, round shoulders, and the arms of giants, were welding
+red-hot chains together with hammers that pelted like thunderbolts.
+
+They looked on the prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their
+hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, "Take out
+Elijah Harbottle's gyves;" and with a pincers he plucked the end which
+lay dazzling in the fire from the furnace.
+
+"One end locks," said he, taking the cool end of the iron in one hand,
+while with the grip of a vice he seized the leg of the Judge, and locked
+the ring round his ankle. "The other," he said with a grin, "is welded."
+
+The iron band that was to form the ring for the other leg lay still
+red-hot upon the stone floor, with brilliant sparks sporting up and down
+its surface.
+
+His companion in his gigantic hands seized the old Judge's other leg,
+and pressed his foot immovably to the stone floor; while his senior in a
+twinkling, with a masterly application of pincers and hammer, sped the
+glowing bar round his ankle so tight that the skin and sinews smoked and
+bubbled again, and old Judge Harbottle uttered a yell that seemed to
+chill the very stones, and make the iron chains quiver on the wall.
+
+Chains, vaults, smiths, and smithy all vanished in a moment; but the
+pain continued. Mr. Justice Harbottle was suffering torture all round
+the ankle on which the infernal smiths had just been operating.
+
+His friends Thavies and Beller were startled by the Judge's roar in the
+midst of their elegant trifling about a marriage à-la-mode case which
+was going on. The Judge was in panic as well as pain. The street-lamps
+and the light of his own hall-door restored him.
+
+"I'm very bad," growled he between his set teeth; "my foot's blazing.
+Who was he that hurt my foot? 'Tis the gout--'tis the gout!" he said,
+awaking completely. "How many hours have we been coming from the
+playhouse? 'Sblood, what has happened on the way? I've slept half the
+night?"
+
+There had been no hitch or delay, and they had driven home at a good
+pace.
+
+The Judge, however, was in gout; he was feverish too; and the attack,
+though very short, was sharp; and when, in about a fortnight, it
+subsided, his ferocious joviality did not return. He could not get this
+dream, as he chose to call it, out of his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOMEBODY HAS GOT INTO THE HOUSE.
+
+
+People remarked that the Judge was in the vapours. His doctor said he
+should go for a fortnight to Buxton.
+
+Whenever the Judge fell into a brown study, he was always conning over
+the terms of the sentence pronounced upon him in his vision--"in one
+calendar month from the date of this day;" and then the usual form, "and
+you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead," &c. "That will be
+the 10th--I'm not much in the way of being hanged. I know what stuff
+dreams are, and I laugh at them; but this is continually in my thoughts,
+as if it forecast misfortune of some sort. I wish the day my dream gave
+me were passed and over. I wish I were well purged of my gout. I wish I
+were as I used to be. 'Tis nothing but vapours, nothing but a maggot."
+The copy of the parchment and letter which had announced his trial with
+many a snort and sneer he would read over and over again, and the
+scenery and people of his dream would rise about him in places the most
+unlikely, and steal him in a moment from all that surrounded him into a
+world of shadows.
+
+The Judge had lost his iron energy and banter. He was growing taciturn
+and morose. The Bar remarked the change, as well they might. His friends
+thought him ill. The doctor said he was troubled with hypochondria, and
+that his gout was still lurking in his system, and ordered him to that
+ancient haunt of crutches and chalk-stones, Buxton.
+
+The Judge's spirits were very low; he was frightened about himself; and
+he described to his housekeeper, having sent for her to his study to
+drink a dish of tea, his strange dream in his drive home from Drury Lane
+playhouse. He was sinking into the state of nervous dejection in which
+men lose their faith in orthodox advice, and in despair consult quacks,
+astrologers, and nursery story-tellers. Could such a dream mean that he
+was to have a fit, and so die on the 10th? She did not think so. On the
+contrary, it was certain some good luck must happen on that day.
+
+The Judge kindled; and for the first time for many days, he looked for a
+minute or two like himself, and he tapped her on the cheek with the hand
+that was not in flannel.
+
+"Odsbud! odsheart! you dear rogue! I had forgot. There is young
+Tom--yellow Tom, my nephew, you know, lies sick at Harrogate; why
+shouldn't he go that day as well as another, and if he does, I get an
+estate by it? Why, lookee, I asked Doctor Hedstone yesterday if I was
+like to take a fit any time, and he laughed, and swore I was the last
+man in town to go off that way."
+
+The Judge sent most of his servants down to Buxton to make his lodgings
+and all things comfortable for him. He was to follow in a day or two.
+
+It was now the 9th; and the next day well over, he might laugh at his
+visions and auguries.
+
+On the evening of the 9th, Doctor Hedstone's footman knocked at the
+Judge's door. The doctor ran up the dusky stairs to the drawing-room. It
+was a March evening, near the hour of sunset, with an east wind
+whistling sharply through the chimney-stacks. A wood fire blazed
+cheerily on the hearth. And Judge Harbottle, in what was then called a
+brigadier-wig, with his red roquelaure on, helped the glowing effect of
+the darkened chamber, which looked red all over like a room on fire.
+
+The Judge had his feet on a stool, and his huge grim purple face
+confronted the fire and seemed to pant and swell, as the blaze
+alternately spread upward and collapsed. He had fallen again among his
+blue devils, and was thinking of retiring from the Bench, and of fifty
+other gloomy things.
+
+But the doctor, who was an energetic son of Æsculapius, would listen to
+no croaking, told the Judge he was full of gout, and in his present
+condition no judge even of his own case, but promised him leave to
+pronounce on all those melancholy questions, a fortnight later.
+
+In the meantime the Judge must be very careful. He was over-charged
+with gout, and he must not provoke an attack, till the waters of Buxton
+should do that office for him, in their own salutary way.
+
+The doctor did not think him perhaps quite so well as he pretended, for
+he told him he wanted rest, and would be better if he went forthwith to
+his bed.
+
+Mr. Gerningham, his valet, assisted him, and gave him his drops; and the
+Judge told him to wait in his bedroom till he should go to sleep.
+
+Three persons that night had specially odd stories to tell.
+
+The housekeeper had got rid of the trouble of amusing her little girl at
+this anxious time by giving her leave to run about the sitting-rooms and
+look at the pictures and china, on the usual condition of touching
+nothing. It was not until the last gleam of sunset had for some time
+faded, and the twilight had so deepened that she could no longer
+discern the colours on the china figures on the chimney-piece or in the
+cabinets, that the child returned to the housekeeper's room to find her
+mother.
+
+To her she related, after some prattle about the china, and the
+pictures, and the Judge's two grand wigs in the dressing-room off the
+library, an adventure of an extraordinary kind.
+
+In the hall was placed, as was customary in those times, the sedan-chair
+which the master of the house occasionally used, covered with stamped
+leather, and studded with gilt nails, and with its red silk blinds down.
+In this case, the doors of this old-fashioned conveyance were locked,
+the windows up, and, as I said, the blinds down, but not so closely that
+the curious child could not peep underneath one of them, and see into
+the interior.
+
+A parting beam from the setting sun, admitted through the window of a
+back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the
+chair, shone with a dull transparency through the crimson blind.
+
+To her surprise, the child saw in the shadow a thin man dressed in black
+seated in it; he had sharp dark features; his nose, she fancied, a
+little awry, and his brown eyes were looking straight before him; his
+hand was on his thigh, and he stirred no more than the waxen figure she
+had seen at Southwark fair.
+
+A child is so often lectured for asking questions and on the propriety
+of silence, and the superior wisdom of its elders, that it accepts most
+things at last in good faith; and the little girl acquiesced
+respectfully in the occupation of the chair by this mahogany-faced
+person as being all right and proper.
+
+It was not until she asked her mother who this man was, and observed her
+scared face as she questioned her more minutely upon the appearance of
+the stranger, that she began to understand that she had seen something
+unaccountable.
+
+Mrs. Carwell took the key of the chair from its nail over the footman's
+shelf, and led the child by the hand up to the hall, having a lighted
+candle in her other hand. She stopped at a distance from the chair, and
+placed the candlestick in the child's hand.
+
+"Peep in, Margery, again, and try if there's anything there," she
+whispered; "hold the candle near the blind so as to throw its light
+through the curtain."
+
+The child peeped, this time with a very solemn face, and intimated at
+once that he was gone.
+
+"Look again, and be sure," urged her mother.
+
+The little girl was quite certain; and Mrs. Carwell, with her mob-cap of
+lace and cherry-coloured ribbons, and her dark brown hair, not yet
+powdered, over a very pale face, unlocked the door, looked in, and
+beheld emptiness.
+
+"All a mistake, child, you see."
+
+"_There_, ma'am! see there! He's gone round the corner," said the child.
+
+"Where?" said Mrs. Carwell, stepping backward a step.
+
+"Into that room."
+
+"Tut, child! 'twas the shadow," cried Mrs. Carwell angrily, because she
+was frightened. "I moved the candle." But she clutched one of the poles
+of the chair, which leant against the wall in the corner, and pounded
+the floor furiously with one end of it, being afraid to pass the open
+door the child had pointed to.
+
+The cook and two kitchen-maids came running upstairs, not knowing what
+to make of this unwonted alarm.
+
+They all searched the room; but it was still and empty, and no sign of
+any one's having been there.
+
+Some people may suppose that the direction given to her thoughts by this
+odd little incident will account for a very strange illusion which Mrs.
+Carwell herself experienced about two hours later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE JUDGE LEAVES HIS HOUSE.
+
+
+Mrs. Flora Carwell was going up the great staircase with a posset for
+the Judge in a china bowl, on a little silver tray.
+
+Across the top of the well-staircase there runs a massive oak rail; and,
+raising her eyes accidentally, she saw an extremely odd-looking
+stranger, slim and long, leaning carelessly over with a pipe between his
+finger and thumb. Nose, lips, and chin seemed all to droop downward into
+extraordinary length, as he leant his odd peering face over the
+banister. In his other hand he held a coil of rope, one end of which
+escaped from under his elbow and hung over the rail.
+
+Mrs. Carwell, who had no suspicion at the moment, that he was not a real
+person, and fancied that he was some one employed in cording the Judge's
+luggage, called to know what he was doing there.
+
+Instead of answering, he turned about, and walked across the lobby, at
+about the same leisurely pace at which she was ascending, and entered a
+room, into which she followed him. It was an uncarpeted and unfurnished
+chamber. An open trunk lay upon the floor empty, and beside it the coil
+of rope; but except herself there was no one in the room.
+
+Mrs. Carwell was very much frightened, and now concluded that the child
+must have seen the same ghost that had just appeared to her. Perhaps,
+when she was able to think it over, it was a relief to believe so; for
+the face, figure, and dress described by the child were awfully like
+Pyneweck; and this certainly was not he.
+
+Very much scared and very hysterical, Mrs. Carwell ran down to her room,
+afraid to look over her shoulder, and got some companions about her, and
+wept, and talked, and drank more than one cordial, and talked and wept
+again, and so on, until, in those early days, it was ten o'clock, and
+time to go to bed.
+
+A scullery-maid remained up finishing some of her scouring and
+"scalding" for some time after the other servants--who, as I said, were
+few in number--that night had got to their beds. This was a low-browed,
+broad-faced, intrepid wench with black hair, who did not "vally a ghost
+not a button," and treated the housekeeper's hysterics with measureless
+scorn.
+
+The old house was quiet, now. It was near twelve o'clock, no sounds were
+audible except the muffled wailing of the wintry winds, piping high
+among the roofs and chimneys, or rumbling at intervals, in under gusts,
+through the narrow channels of the street.
+
+The spacious solitudes of the kitchen level were awfully dark, and this
+sceptical kitchen-wench was the only person now up and about, in the
+house. She hummed tunes to herself, for a time; and then stopped and
+listened; and then resumed her work again. At last, she was destined to
+be more terrified than even was the housekeeper.
+
+There was a back-kitchen in this house, and from this she heard, as if
+coming from below its foundations, a sound like heavy strokes, that
+seemed to shake the earth beneath her feet. Sometimes a dozen in
+sequence, at regular intervals; sometimes fewer. She walked out softly
+into the passage, and was surprised to see a dusky glow issuing from
+this room, as if from a charcoal fire.
+
+The room seemed thick with smoke.
+
+Looking in, she very dimly beheld a monstrous figure, over a furnace,
+beating with a mighty hammer the rings and rivets of a chain.
+
+The strokes, swift and heavy as they looked, sounded hollow and distant.
+The man stopped, and pointed to something on the floor, that, through
+the smoky haze, looked, she thought, like a dead body. She remarked no
+more; but the servants in the room close by, startled from their sleep
+by a hideous scream, found her in a swoon on the flags, close to the
+door, where she had just witnessed this ghastly vision.
+
+Startled by the girl's incoherent asseverations that she had seen the
+Judge's corpse on the floor, two servants having first searched the
+lower part of the house, went rather frightened upstairs to inquire
+whether their master was well. They found him, not in his bed, but in
+his room. He had a table with candles burning at his bedside, and was
+getting on his clothes again; and he swore and cursed at them roundly in
+his old style, telling them that he had business, and that he would
+discharge on the spot any scoundrel who should dare to disturb him
+again.
+
+So the invalid was left to his quietude.
+
+In the morning it was rumoured here and there in the street that the
+Judge was dead. A servant was sent from the house three doors away, by
+Counsellor Traverse, to inquire at Judge Harbottle's hall-door.
+
+The servant who opened it was pale and reserved, and would only say that
+the Judge was ill. He had had a dangerous accident; Doctor Hedstone had
+been with him at seven o'clock in the morning.
+
+There were averted looks, short answers, pale and frowning faces, and
+all the usual signs that there was a secret that sat heavily upon their
+minds, and the time for disclosing which had not yet come. That time
+would arrive when the coroner had arrived, and the mortal scandal that
+had befallen the house could be no longer hidden. For that morning Mr.
+Justice Harbottle had been found hanging by the neck from the banister
+at the top of the great staircase, and quite dead.
+
+There was not the smallest sign of any struggle or resistance. There had
+not been heard a cry or any other noise in the slightest degree
+indicative of violence. There was medical evidence to show that, in his
+atrabilious state, it was quite on the cards that he might have made
+away with himself. The jury found accordingly that it was a case of
+suicide. But to those who were acquainted with the strange story which
+Judge Harbottle had related to at least two persons, the fact that the
+catastrophe occurred on the morning of the 10th March seemed a
+startling coincidence.
+
+A few days after, the pomp of a great funeral attended him to the grave;
+and so, in the language of Scripture, "the rich man died, and was
+buried."
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3, by 
+Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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+Project Gutenberg's In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3
+
+Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37172]
+Last updated: April 22, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN A GLASS DARKLY, V. 1/3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+IN A GLASS DARKLY.
+
+BY
+
+J. SHERIDAN LE FANU,
+
+AUTHOR OF "UNCLE SILAS," &C.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+R. BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+1872.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+BRINSLEY HOMAN, ESQ.
+
+THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED,
+
+WITH MUCH AFFECTION,
+
+BY HIS OLD FRIEND
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+In a Glass Darkly.
+
+
+GREEN TEA.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+MARTIN HESSELIUS, THE GERMAN PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never
+practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest
+me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the
+honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
+trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me
+the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss
+of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom
+been twelve months together in the same place.
+
+In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a
+wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in
+his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,
+and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at
+least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was
+an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
+
+In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,
+his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a
+young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood
+the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was
+well-founded.
+
+For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense
+collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and
+bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two
+distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an
+intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had
+seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day,
+or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns
+upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art, and with all the force
+and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis
+and illustration.
+
+Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay
+reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it
+may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of
+language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The
+narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes
+of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years
+ago.
+
+It is related in a series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of
+Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who
+read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written
+a play.
+
+The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical
+record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an
+unlearned reader.
+
+These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned
+on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are
+written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in
+German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful
+translator, and although here and there, I omit some passages, and
+shorten others and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DR. HESSELIUS RELATES HOW HE MET THE REV. MR. JENNINGS.
+
+
+The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses
+with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a
+little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being
+handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also
+shy.
+
+I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty and
+benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but
+a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation. He
+seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk;
+but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great
+favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems, consults him upon many things,
+and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows
+she about him.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say, sixty thousand
+pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be
+actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always
+tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in
+Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling his
+health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
+
+There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in,
+generally a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of
+officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart,
+it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or
+oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a
+sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to
+resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and
+eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange
+shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room,
+leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This
+occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis, now,
+he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to
+supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly
+incapacitated.
+
+When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the
+vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly,
+he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always
+perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of
+course. We shall see.
+
+Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentleman-like man. People, however, remark
+something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing
+which certainly contributes to it, people I think don't remember; or,
+perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings
+has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed
+the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It
+occurs only now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as
+I have said to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the
+floor there is something both shy and anxious.
+
+A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating
+theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched
+and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely
+more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls
+insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere,
+and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every
+subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding
+inquiry.
+
+There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but
+reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable
+little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set
+down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly
+scientific paper.
+
+I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I
+hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more
+comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant.
+I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of
+that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I
+believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an
+organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we
+ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the
+material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death
+consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply
+his extrication from the natural body--a process which commences at the
+moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a
+few days later, is the resurrection "in power."
+
+The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably
+see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by
+no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the
+consequences of this too generally unrecognised state of facts.
+
+In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with
+all my caution--I think he perceived it--and I saw plainly that he was
+as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my
+name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and
+then became thoughtful for a few minutes.
+
+After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the
+room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I
+thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting
+with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the
+subject of a distant inquiry and answer.
+
+This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by: and in a little time we had
+got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books
+and places, having travelled, wish to converse, it is very strange if
+they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me,
+and led him into conversation. He knew German, and had read my Essays on
+Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say.
+
+This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading,
+who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I
+already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were
+carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the
+world, but his best beloved friends--was cautiously weighing in his own
+mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me.
+
+I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful
+to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my
+suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans
+respecting myself.
+
+We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time; but at last he said:
+
+"I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon
+what you term Metaphysical Medicine--I read them in German, ten or
+twelve years ago--have they been translated?"
+
+"No, I'm sure they have not--I should have heard. They would have asked
+my leave, I think."
+
+"I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me
+in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print."
+
+"So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author
+to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although," I added,
+laughing, "ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed
+without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again
+in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest
+in it."
+
+At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden
+embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a
+young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his
+hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said,
+guiltily for a moment.
+
+I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to
+observe it, and going straight on, I said: "Those revivals of interest
+in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests another, and often
+sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But
+if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to
+provide you; I have still got two or three by me--and if you allow me to
+present one I shall be very much honoured."
+
+"You are very good indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a
+moment: "I almost despaired--I don't know how to thank you."
+
+"Pray don't say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am
+only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall
+throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty."
+
+Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and
+after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his
+departure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE DOCTOR QUESTIONS LADY MARY, AND SHE ANSWERS.
+
+
+"I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary," said I, so soon as he was gone.
+"He has read, travelled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought
+to be an accomplished companion."
+
+"So he is, and, better still, he is a really good man," said she. "His
+advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at
+Dawlbridge, and he's so painstaking, he takes so much trouble--you have
+no idea--wherever he thinks he can be of use: he's so good-natured and
+so sensible."
+
+"It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I
+can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in
+addition to what you have told me, I think I can tell you two or three
+things about him," said I.
+
+"Really!"
+
+"Yes, to begin with, he's unmarried."
+
+"Yes, that's right,--go on."
+
+"He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years
+perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some
+rather abstract subject--perhaps theology."
+
+"Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I'm not quite sure what it was
+about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for, very likely you
+are right, and he certainly did stop--yes."
+
+"And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes
+tea, at least, did like it, extravagantly."
+
+"Yes, that's _quite_ true."
+
+"He drank green tea, a good deal, didn't he?" I pursued.
+
+"Well, that's very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost
+to quarrel."
+
+"But he has quite given that up," said I.
+
+"So he has."
+
+"And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?"
+
+"Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near
+Dawlbridge. We knew them very well," she answered.
+
+"Well, either his mother or his father--I should rather think his
+father, saw a ghost," said I.
+
+"Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius."
+
+"Conjurer or no, haven't I said right?" I answered merrily.
+
+"You certainly have, and it was his father: he was a silent, whimsical
+man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told
+him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd
+story it was. I remember it particularly, because I was so afraid of
+him. This story was long before he died--when I was quite a child--and
+his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in, sometimes,
+in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawing-room, and I used to fancy
+there were ghosts about him."
+
+I smiled and nodded.
+
+"And now having established my character as a conjurer I think I must
+say good-night," said I.
+
+"But how _did_ you find it out?"
+
+"By the planets of course, as the gipsies do," I answered, and so,
+gaily, we said good-night.
+
+Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a
+note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that
+he had called, at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was
+at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me.
+
+Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me "professionally," as
+they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is
+supported by Lady Mary's answers to my parting questions. I should like
+much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with
+good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he
+meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shan't make myself
+difficult of access; I mean to return his visit to-morrow. It will be
+only civil in return for his politeness, to ask to see him. Perhaps
+something may come of it. Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van
+L., you shall hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DR. HESSELIUS PICKS UP SOMETHING IN LATIN BOOKS.
+
+
+Well, I have called at Blank-street.
+
+On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was
+engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his
+parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege and to call
+again, I merely intimated that I should try another time, and had turned
+to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a
+little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do,
+whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said,
+"Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings,
+for I am sure he wishes to see you."
+
+The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings,
+asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back
+drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes.
+
+This was really a study--almost a library. The room was lofty, with two
+tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I
+had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the
+ceiling. The upper carpet--for to my tread it felt that there were two
+or three--was a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The book-cases
+standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep
+recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable,
+and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost
+oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for
+association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I
+stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a
+peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for
+except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were
+everywhere, helped this sombre feeling.
+
+While awaiting Mr. Jennings' arrival, I amused myself by looking into
+some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these,
+but immediately under them, with their backs upward, on the floor, I
+lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg's Arcana Caelestia, in the
+original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which
+theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges.
+There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and
+placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where
+these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a
+series of sentences indicated by a pencilled line at the margin. Of
+these I copy here a few, translating them into English.
+
+"When man's interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then
+there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made
+visible to the bodily sight."...
+
+"By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are
+in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world.
+From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists
+from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so
+on."...
+
+"There are with every man at least two evil spirits."...
+
+"With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating.
+There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the
+dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping
+along within it."...
+
+"The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed, from the hells, but
+when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The
+place where they then are is in the midst between heaven and hell, and
+is called the world of spirits--when the evil spirits who are with man,
+are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every
+thought and affection of the man, and so, in all that the man himself
+enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their
+former state."...
+
+"If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and
+yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in
+into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to
+destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred."...
+
+"Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually
+striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to
+the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the
+life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by
+the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living
+consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith."...
+
+"Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate
+spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it
+they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him."...
+
+"The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal
+ruin."
+
+A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings'
+neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his
+criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was
+something quite different, and began with these words, _Deus misereatur
+mei_--"May God compassionate me." Thus warned of its private nature, I
+averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had
+found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men
+studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to
+take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was.
+
+I was reading some pages which refer to "representatives" and
+"correspondents," in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had
+arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits,
+when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, present
+themselves, by "correspondence," in the shape of the beast (_fera_)
+which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and
+atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those
+bestial forms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FOUR EYES WERE READING THE PASSAGE.
+
+
+I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it,
+and something caused me to raise my eyes.
+
+Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I
+saw reflected the tall shape of my friend Mr. Jennings leaning over my
+shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so
+dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.
+
+I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a
+little, saying:
+
+"I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking
+you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very
+impertinently, I'm afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your
+first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg,
+no doubt, long ago?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces
+of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so
+good as to remember."
+
+Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush
+in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed.
+
+"I'm scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I've only
+had them a fortnight," he answered, "and I think they are rather likely
+to make a solitary man nervous--that is, judging from the very little I
+have read--I don't say that they have made me so," he laughed; "and I'm
+so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?"
+
+I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers.
+
+"I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours," he
+continued. "I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded. Do
+you know Dr. Harley?" he asked, rather abruptly.
+
+In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of
+the most eminent who had ever practised in England.
+
+I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great
+courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.
+
+"I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,"
+said Mr. Jennings.
+
+This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of
+anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.
+
+"Really! and in what way?" I asked.
+
+"In his profession," he answered.
+
+I smiled.
+
+"I mean this," he said: "he seems to me, one half, blind--I mean one
+half of all he looks at is dark--preternaturally bright and vivid all
+the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems _wilful_. I can't get him--I
+mean he won't--I've had some experience of him as a physician, but I
+look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an
+intellect half dead, I'll tell you--I know I shall some time--all about
+it," he said, with a little agitation. "You stay some months longer in
+England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time,
+would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?"
+
+"I should be only too happy," I assured him.
+
+"Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley."
+
+"A little leaning to the materialistic school," I said.
+
+"A _mere_ materialist," he corrected me; "you can't think how that sort
+of thing worries one who knows better. You won't tell any one--any of my
+friends you know--that I am hippish; now, for instance, no one
+knows--not even Lady Mary--that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other
+doctor. So pray don't mention it; and, if I should have any threatening
+of an attack, you'll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have
+a little talk with you."
+
+I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes
+gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said:
+
+"I see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a
+conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the
+rest of your life, you will never hit on it."
+
+He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud
+suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men
+do in pain.
+
+"Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any
+of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you
+that your confidence is sacred."
+
+He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful
+way and after a little time, I took my leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DOCTOR HESSELIUS IS SUMMONED TO RICHMOND.
+
+
+We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are
+certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit--the human
+face--which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor's
+nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me.
+It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my
+plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a
+change of ideas.
+
+I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his
+hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had
+been for some little time so much better--quite well, in fact--that he
+was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to
+his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up.
+There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude for his
+restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.
+
+A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had
+announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having
+resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, "I begin to think
+that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the
+matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy
+there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and
+he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did
+not come back for a year."
+
+Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this
+note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:
+
+"Dear Sir.--I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able
+to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present I am too
+low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray don't
+mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. By-and-by, please God,
+you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some
+of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily
+than I can now write."
+
+About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last
+person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for
+the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from
+Mr. Jennings' niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be
+gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In
+those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of
+suffering is sometimes hidden!
+
+Nearly five weeks passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At
+the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote:
+
+"I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of
+scene, change of faces, change of everything and in everything--but
+_myself_. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature
+on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements
+will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but,
+pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I
+have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage
+to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea. You shall have no
+trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank street, who takes this
+note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am
+always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. I have
+tried everything. Come and see."
+
+I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening,
+which accordingly I did.
+
+He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought,
+as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very
+old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which
+over-topped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for
+nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found,
+belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding
+it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because
+being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of
+selection, by coming here.
+
+The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky
+illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all
+familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back
+drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same
+dusky light.
+
+I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in
+the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The
+corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the
+gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was
+sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place.
+The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure
+of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet
+stealthy steps, into the room.
+
+We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still
+light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down beside
+me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface
+began his narrative.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HOW MR. JENNINGS MET HIS COMPANION.
+
+
+The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of
+Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on
+the stony face or the sufferer--for the character of his face, though
+still gentle and sweet, was changed--rested that dim, odd glow which
+seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though
+faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The
+silence, too, was utter; not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from
+without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's
+house.
+
+I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of
+the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of
+suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of
+Schalken's, before its background of darkness.
+
+"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven
+weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is
+torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.
+
+"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much
+thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the
+ancients."
+
+"I know," said I; "the actual religion of educated and thinking
+paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting
+field."
+
+"Yes; but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism
+is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their
+religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is
+a degrading fascination and the nemesis sure. God forgive me!
+
+"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on
+the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly
+infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected
+with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself
+delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care."
+
+He sighed heavily.
+
+"I believe that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his
+work, as a friend of mine phrased it, _on_ something--tea, or coffee, or
+tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly
+supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted,
+and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded
+often of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the
+want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion--at first the ordinary
+black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good
+deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an
+uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I
+found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of
+thought so. I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one
+might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so
+quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a
+habit with me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work
+proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp,
+and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three
+in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every
+day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a
+library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I
+was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty
+much as usual, and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence
+had never been, I think, so pleasant before.
+
+"I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in
+mediaeval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them.
+This obliging person's books were in the City, a very out-of-the-way
+part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and, on coming
+out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which
+used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the
+'bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars
+at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got
+out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in
+my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.
+
+"The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the
+corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses,
+two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light.
+They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small
+brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began
+to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From
+what centre did that faint but deep red light come, and from what--glass
+beads, buttons, toy decorations--was it reflected? We were lumbering
+along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the
+puzzle, and it became in another minute more odd, for these two
+luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer the floor, keeping
+still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as
+suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting, and
+I saw them no more.
+
+"My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I
+saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again
+they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them.
+
+"So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards
+the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red.
+
+"There was very little light in the 'bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned
+forward to aid my endeavour to discover what these little circles really
+were. They shifted their position a little as I did so. I began now to
+perceive an outline of something black, and I soon saw with tolerable
+distinctness the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face
+forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly
+saw its teeth grinning at me.
+
+"I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. I
+fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing
+to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my
+fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained
+immovable--up to it--_through_ it! For through it, and back and forward,
+it passed, without the slightest resistance.
+
+"I can't, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt.
+When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then
+supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that
+fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute
+for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into
+the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my
+head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the
+lights and trees we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of
+reality.
+
+"I stopped the 'bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as
+I paid him. I daresay there was something unusual in my looks and
+manner, for I had never felt so strangely before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE JOURNEY: FIRST STAGE.
+
+
+"When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked
+carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my
+indescribable relief I saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a
+shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding
+myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it.
+
+"I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three
+hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the
+wall is a hedge of yew or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within
+that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you
+came.
+
+"This brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise
+my eyes I saw the monkey, with that stooping gait, on all fours, walking
+or creeping, close beside me on top of the wall. I stopped looking at it
+with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up
+on the wall with its long hands on its knees looking at me. There was
+not light enough to see it much more than in outline, nor was it dark
+enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I
+still saw, however, that red foggy light plainly enough. It did not show
+its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and
+sulky, and was observing me steadily.
+
+"I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil,
+and there I stood, still looking at it, it did not move.
+
+"With an instinctive determination to try something--anything, I turned
+about and walked briskly towards town with a skance look, all the time,
+watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall, at
+exactly my pace.
+
+"Where the wall ends, near the turn of the road, it came down and with a
+wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to
+keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so
+close to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it.
+
+"The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment.
+I stopped dismayed and bewildered, turning as I did so, the other way--I
+mean, towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I
+stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about
+five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me.
+
+"I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as
+every one has, something about 'spectral illusions,' as you physicians
+term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation, and looked
+my misfortune in the face.
+
+"These affections, I had read, are sometimes transitory and sometimes
+obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance, at first
+harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and
+insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still as I stood
+there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort
+myself by repeating again and again the assurance, 'the thing is purely
+disease, a well-known physical affection, as distinctly as small-pox or
+neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it.
+I must not be a fool. I've been sitting up too late, and I daresay my
+digestion is quite wrong, and with God's help, I shall be all right, and
+this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia.' Did I believe all this? Not
+one word of it, no more than any other miserable being ever did who is
+once seized and riveted in this satanic captivity. Against my
+convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into
+a false courage.
+
+"I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had
+forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the
+sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune.
+
+"I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved close
+beside me, and I fancied there was the sort of anxious drawing toward
+the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs, sometimes as they
+come toward home.
+
+"I was afraid to go into town, I was afraid of any one's seeing and
+recognising me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my
+manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as
+going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue
+myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when
+the door was opened entered with me.
+
+"I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandy-and-water. My
+idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a
+while in sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it it
+were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawing-room. I sat just
+here. The monkey then got upon a small table that then stood _there_. It
+looked dazed and languid. An irrepressible uneasiness as to its
+movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I
+could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations,
+at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes.
+
+"I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I
+shall describe, rather, the phenomena of the first year, which never
+varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in
+daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are
+peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It had only one
+peculiarity--a character of malignity--unfathomable malignity. During
+the first year it looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense
+malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During
+all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as
+was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me, I have
+never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or
+night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at
+a time, unaccountably.
+
+"In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its
+eyes. It is _all_ visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of
+red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements.
+
+"When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and
+in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then
+advances towards me, grinning and shaking its paws clenched, and, at the
+same time, there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have
+any fire. I can't sleep in the room where there is any, and it draws
+nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and
+when its fury rises to the highest pitch, it springs into the grate, and
+up the chimney, and I see it no more.
+
+"When first this happened I thought I was released. I was a new man. A
+day passed--a night--and no return, and a blessed week--a week--another
+week. I was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and
+praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with
+me again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE SECOND STAGE.
+
+
+"It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen
+exterior, was now active. It was perfectly unchanged in every other
+respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and
+soon in other ways.
+
+"For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an
+increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it was always brooding
+over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me."
+
+"Is it here now?" I asked.
+
+"No," he replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a
+day--fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two
+months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although
+it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it
+last, it may return now at any moment."
+
+"Is its return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"
+
+"Nothing--no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes
+from a book, or turning my head, I see it as usual, looking at me, and
+then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so
+much and so minutely before to any one."
+
+I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he
+repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he
+might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the
+morning, but he said:
+
+"No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I
+should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had
+nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give
+spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real--"
+
+He paused, looking at me with agitated inquiry.
+
+"We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I
+think," I answered, after an interval.
+
+"Well--very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing,
+little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic
+nerves, he talked of. Ah! well--there are other nerves of communication.
+May God Almighty help me! You shall hear.
+
+"Its power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a
+way aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending
+between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish
+in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not
+prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have
+apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so, is this--"
+
+He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance,
+and sighed often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time
+his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient,
+who has given himself up.
+
+"Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis, my parish.
+
+"It was with me when I left this place for Dawlbridge. It was my silent
+travelling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I
+entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The
+thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me
+in the church--in the reading-desk--in the pulpit--within the communion
+rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to
+the congregation, it would spring upon the open book and squat there, so
+that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once.
+
+"I left Dawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I
+did everything he told me. He gave my case a great deal of thought. It
+interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly three months I
+was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his
+full assent I returned to Dawlbridge.
+
+"I travelled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more--I was happy
+and grateful. I was returning, as I thought delivered from a dreadful
+hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It
+was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful,
+and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the
+spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has
+the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that
+bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it
+emerges at the road-side, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As
+we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner
+of the chaise was the monkey.
+
+"For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror.
+I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the road-side, and
+prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened.
+My companion was with me as I re-entered the vicarage. The same
+persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I
+left the place.
+
+"I told you," he said, "that the beast has before this become in certain
+ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by
+intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even
+meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You
+will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was
+thus, whenever I meditated praying; it was always before me, and nearer
+and nearer.
+
+"It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the
+chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at
+me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to
+dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony,
+till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to
+nothing--and unless I had started up, and shook off the catalepsy I
+have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself. There are
+other ways," he sighed heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with
+my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is
+not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my
+lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me,
+and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known
+this, you would be acquainted with desperation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE THIRD STAGE.
+
+
+"I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I
+need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you.
+They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the
+organ of sight was the only point assailable by the influences that have
+fastened upon me--I know better. For two years in my direful case that
+limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and
+then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in
+a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so
+the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the
+finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery
+of hell, until he is as I am. Yes, Doctor, as _I_ am, for while I talk
+to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible,
+and my pleading with the inexorable."
+
+I endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation, and told him
+that he must not despair.
+
+While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moonlight was wide
+over the scene which the window commanded, and I said:
+
+"Perhaps you would prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd.
+I should wish you, as much as possible, under your usual conditions
+while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it--otherwise I don't care."
+
+"All lights are the same to me," he said: "except when I read or write,
+I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened
+about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me."
+
+"Speak! How do you mean--speak as a man does, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes; speak in words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence
+and articulation; but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of
+a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me--it comes like a
+singing through my head.
+
+"This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't
+let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go
+on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers of
+man avail me nothing!"
+
+"You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with
+unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine yourself strictly to the
+narrative of _facts_; and recollect, above all, that even if the thing
+that infests you be as you seem to suppose, a reality with an actual
+independent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless
+it be given from above: its access to your senses depends mainly upon
+your physical condition--this is, under God, your comfort and reliance:
+we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the
+'_paries_,' the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of
+repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new
+course, sir--be encouraged. I'll give to-night to the careful
+consideration of the whole case."
+
+"You are very good, sir; you think it worth trying, you don't give me
+quite up; but, sir, you don't know, it is gaining such an influence
+over me: it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and I'm growing so
+helpless. May God deliver me!"
+
+"It orders you about--of course you mean by speech?"
+
+"Yes, yes; it is always urging me to crimes, to injure others, or
+myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is urgent, it is indeed. When I
+was in Shropshire, a few weeks ago" (Mr. Jennings was speaking rapidly
+and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand, and looking in my
+face), "I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk: my
+persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the
+rest: the country near the Dee, you know, is beautiful. Our path
+happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a
+perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece
+had remained behind with me--she knows, of course, nothing of the
+nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill, and was
+low, and she remained to prevent my being quite alone. As we loitered
+slowly on together the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw
+myself down the shaft. I tell you now--oh, sir, think of it!--the one
+consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest
+the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor
+girl. I asked her to go on and take her walk with her friends, saying
+that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I urged her
+the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. I suppose
+there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her; but she
+would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a
+living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan," he said, with a
+ghastly groan and a shudder.
+
+There was a pause here, and I said, "You were preserved nevertheless. It
+was the act of God. You are in his hands and in the power of no other
+being: be therefore confident for the future."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+HOME.
+
+
+I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and
+inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness
+strictly as one dependent on physical, though _subtle_ physical, causes.
+I told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the
+deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with
+pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that
+he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a
+conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only
+so, but more contrary to facts, as disclosed in his mysterious
+deliverance from that murderous influence during his Shropshire
+excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his
+intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused
+into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful
+suggestion in her presence.
+
+As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed
+comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at
+any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my
+assurance that I would give neither time nor thought to any other
+subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that to-morrow
+he should hear the result, I took my leave.
+
+Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was
+far from well, and that he should make a point of frequently looking
+into his room.
+
+My own arrangements I made with a view to being quite secure from
+interruption.
+
+I merely called at my lodgings, and with a travelling-desk and
+carpet-bag, set off in a hackney-carriage for an inn about two miles out
+of town, called The Horns, a very quiet and comfortable house, with good
+thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion
+or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable
+sitting-room, to Mr. Jennings' case, and so much of the morning as it
+might require.
+
+(There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius' opinion upon the
+case and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It
+is curious--some persons would say mystical. But on the whole I doubt
+whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely
+to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was
+plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion.
+The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.)
+
+I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and
+did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this afternoon. I
+found a letter in Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It had not come by
+post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought
+it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no
+one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said
+that his orders from his master were that he was not to return without
+an answer.
+
+I opened the letter, and read:
+
+
+"Dear Dr. Hesselius. It is here. You had not been an hour gone when it
+returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows
+everything--it knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I
+send you this. It knows every word I have written--I write. This I
+promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very confused, very
+incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed.
+
+      "Ever yours, sincerely yours,
+
+          "ROBERT LYNDER JENNINGS."
+
+
+"When did this come?" I asked.
+
+"About eleven last night: the man was here again, and has been here
+three times to-day. The last time is about an hour since."
+
+Thus answered, and with the notes I had made upon his case in my pocket,
+I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings.
+
+I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had
+himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the
+principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which
+governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was
+profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the
+"enemy" was actually present.
+
+I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The
+door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She
+looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my
+question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending
+her hand towards two men who were coming down-stairs; and thus having,
+as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a side-door
+hastily and shut it.
+
+The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now
+close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered
+with blood.
+
+I drew back a little, and the man passing down-stairs merely said in a
+low tone, "Here's the servant, sir."
+
+The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me.
+He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood.
+
+"Jones, what is it, what has happened?" I asked, while a sickening
+suspicion overpowered me.
+
+The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment,
+and frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror
+which I already half guessed.
+
+His master had made away with himself.
+
+I went upstairs with him to the room--what I saw there I won't tell you.
+He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two
+men had laid him on the bed and composed his limbs. It had happened as
+the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance
+between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a
+carpet under his dressing-table, but none on the rest of the floor, for
+the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre,
+and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was
+slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful
+floor.
+
+I beckoned to the servant and we went down-stairs together. I turned off
+the hall into an old-fashioned pannelled room, and there standing, I
+heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal.
+
+"I concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last
+night, that you thought my master seriously ill. I thought it might be
+that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close to
+your directions. He sat up late, till past three o'clock. He was not
+writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to himself, but that was
+nothing unusual. At about that hour I assisted him to undress, and left
+him in his slippers and dressing-gown. I went back softly in about half
+an hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles
+lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow and
+looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if
+he wanted anything, and he said no.
+
+"I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or something a
+little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him
+last night.
+
+"In another half hour, or it might be a little more, I went up again. I
+did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The
+candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and
+I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him
+sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table with his clothes on
+again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should
+get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way.
+But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, no,
+rather sharp, I thought. I asked if I might light the candles, and he
+said, 'Do as you like, Jones,' So I lighted them, and I lingered about
+the room, and he said, 'Tell me truth, Jones, why did you come
+again--you did not hear any one cursing?' 'No, sir,' I said, wondering
+what he could mean.
+
+"'No,' said he, after me, 'of course, no;' and I said to him, 'Wouldn't
+it be well, sir, you went to bed? It's just five o'clock;' and he said
+nothing but, 'Very likely; good-night, Jones.' So I went, sir, but in
+less than hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and
+called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired
+me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must
+have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still
+fast, and he made no answer, so I did not like to disturb him, and
+thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring
+when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him.
+I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while,
+supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock
+I grew really uncomfortable about him--for at the latest he was never,
+that I could remember, later than half-past ten. I got no answer. I
+knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the
+door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and
+found him in the shocking way you saw."
+
+Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very
+kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was
+very much moved.
+
+So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its
+dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write
+to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and
+monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and
+horror. Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a
+poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and
+nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions
+of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange
+bed-fellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+A WORD FOR THOSE WHO SUFFER.
+
+
+My dear Van L----, you have suffered from an affection similar to that
+which I have just described. You twice complained of a return of it.
+
+Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me
+rather adopt the more emphasised piety of a certain good old French
+surgeon of three hundred years ago: "I treated, and God cured you."
+
+Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact.
+
+I have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of
+this kind of vision, which I term indifferently "sublimated,"
+"precocious," and "interior."
+
+There is another class of affections which are truly termed--though
+commonly confounded with those which I describe--spectral illusions.
+These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in
+the head or a trifling dyspepsia.
+
+It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude
+of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor
+less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance.
+
+There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly
+reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the
+physician. With these simple conditions, I look upon the cure as
+absolutely certain.
+
+You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings'
+case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in
+eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some
+cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every
+intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task,
+will effect a cure.
+
+You know my tract on The Cardinal Functions of the Brain. I there, by
+the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high
+probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its mechanism,
+through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the
+heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves,
+returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that
+fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as I before
+remarked, light or electricity are so.
+
+By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green
+tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more
+frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we
+have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain
+or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly
+exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus
+more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and
+the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather
+the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior
+vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the
+eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the
+simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, however, can be
+treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts
+powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it
+will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness,
+and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis.
+
+I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first
+dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had
+inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens,
+and entirely shut up again when the over-action of the cerebral heart,
+and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by
+a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon
+the body, by a simple process, that this result is produced--and
+inevitably produced--I have never yet failed.
+
+Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the
+result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected
+itself upon that disease which was established. His case was in the
+distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he
+really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I
+cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his
+case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and
+unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side
+of the disease, his cure is certain.
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILIAR.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+Out of about two hundred and thirty cases, more or less nearly akin to
+that I have entitled "Green Tea," I select the following, which I call
+"The Familiar."
+
+To this MS. Doctor Hesselius, has, after his wont, attached some sheets
+of letter-paper, on which are written, in his hand nearly as compact as
+print, his own remarks upon the case. He says--
+
+"In point of conscience, no more unexceptionable narrator, than the
+venerable Irish Clergyman who has given me this paper, on Mr. Barton's
+case, could have been chosen. The statement is, however, medically
+imperfect. The report of an intelligent physician, who had marked its
+progress, and attended the patient, from its earlier stages to its
+close, would have supplied what is wanting to enable me to pronounce
+with confidence. I should have been acquainted with Mr. Barton's
+probable hereditary pre-dispositions; I should have known, possibly, by
+very early indications, something of a remoter origin of the disease
+than can now be ascertained.
+
+"In a rough way, we may reduce all similar cases to three distinct
+classes. They are founded on the primary distinction between the
+subjective and the objective. Of those whose senses are alleged to be
+subject to supernatural impressions--some are simply visionaries, and
+propagate the illusions of which they complain, from diseased brain or
+nerves. Others are, unquestionably, infested by, as we term them,
+spiritual agencies, exterior to themselves. Others, again, owe their
+sufferings to a mixed condition. The interior sense, it is true, is
+opened; but it has been and continues open by the action of disease.
+This form of disease may, in one sense, be compared to the loss of the
+scarf-skin, and a consequent exposure of surfaces for whose excessive
+sensitiveness, nature has provided a muffling. The loss of this covering
+is attended by an habitual impassability, by influences against which we
+were intended to be guarded. But in the case of the brain, and the
+nerves immediately connected with its functions and its sensuous
+impressions, the cerebral circulation undergoes periodically that
+vibratory disturbance, which, I believe, I have satisfactorily examined
+and demonstrated, in my MS. Essay, A. 17. This vibratory disturbance
+differs, as I there prove, essentially from the congestive disturbance,
+the phenomena of which are examined in A. 19. It is, when excessive,
+invariably accompanied by _illusions_.
+
+"Had I seen Mr. Barton, and examined him upon the points, in his case,
+which need elucidation, I should have without difficulty referred those
+phenomena to their proper disease. My diagnosis is now, necessarily,
+conjectural."
+
+Thus writes Doctor Hesselius; and adds a great deal which is of interest
+only to a scientific physician.
+
+The Narrative of the Rev. Thomas Herbert, which furnishes all that is
+known of the case, will be found in the chapters that follow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FOOT-STEPS.
+
+
+I was a young man at the time, and intimately acquainted with some of
+the actors in this strange tale; the impression which its incidents made
+on me, therefore, were deep, and lasting. I shall now endeavour, with
+precision, to relate them all, combining, of course, in the narrative,
+whatever I have learned from various sources, tending, however
+imperfectly, to illuminate the darkness which involves its progress and
+termination.
+
+Somewhere about the year 1794, the younger brother of a certain baronet,
+whom I shall call Sir James Barton, returned to Dublin. He had served in
+the navy with some distinction, having commanded one of His Majesty's
+frigates during the greater part of the American war. Captain Barton was
+apparently some two or three-and-forty years of age. He was an
+intelligent and agreeable companion when he pleased it, though generally
+reserved, and occasionally even moody.
+
+In society, however, he deported himself as a man of the world, and a
+gentleman. He had not contracted any of the noisy brusqueness sometimes
+acquired at sea; on the contrary, his manners were remarkably easy,
+quiet, and even polished. He was in person about the middle size, and
+somewhat strongly formed--his countenance was marked with the lines of
+thought, and on the whole wore an expression of gravity and melancholy;
+being, however, as I have said, a man of perfect breeding, as well as of
+good family, and in affluent circumstances, he had, of course, ready
+access to the best society of Dublin, without the necessity of any other
+credentials.
+
+In his personal habits Mr. Barton was unexpensive. He occupied lodgings
+in one of the _then_ fashionable streets in the south side of the
+town--kept but one horse and one servant--and though a reputed
+free-thinker, yet lived an orderly and moral life--indulging neither in
+gaming, drinking, nor any other vicious pursuit--living very much to
+himself, without forming intimacies, or choosing any companions, and
+appearing to mix in gay society rather for the sake of its bustle and
+distraction, than for any opportunities it offered of interchanging
+thought or feeling with its votaries.
+
+Barton was therefore pronounced a saving, prudent, unsocial sort of
+fellow, who bid fair to maintain his celibacy alike against stratagem
+and assault, and was likely to live to a good old age, die rich, and
+leave his money to an hospital.
+
+It was now apparent, however, that the nature of Mr. Barton's plans had
+been totally misconceived. A young lady, whom I shall call Miss
+Montague, was at this time introduced into the gay world, by her aunt,
+the Dowager Lady L----. Miss Montague was decidedly pretty and
+accomplished, and having some natural cleverness, and a great deal of
+gaiety, became for a while a reigning toast.
+
+Her popularity, however, gained her, for a time, nothing more than that
+unsubstantial admiration which, however, pleasant as an incense to
+vanity, is by no means necessarily antecedent to matrimony--for,
+unhappily for the young lady in question, it was an understood thing,
+that beyond her personal attractions, she had no kind of earthly
+provision. Such being the state of affairs, it will readily be believed
+that no little surprise was consequent upon the appearance of Captain
+Barton as the avowed lover of the penniless Miss Montague.
+
+His suit prospered, as might have been expected, and in a short time it
+was communicated by old Lady L---- to each of her hundred-and-fifty
+particular friends in succession, that Captain Barton had actually
+tendered proposals of marriage, with her approbation, to her niece, Miss
+Montague, who had, moreover, accepted the offer of his hand,
+conditionally upon the consent of her father, who was then upon his
+homeward voyage from India, and expected in two or three weeks at the
+furthest.
+
+About this consent there could be no doubt--the delay, therefore, was
+one merely of form--they were looked upon as absolutely engaged, and
+Lady L----, with a rigour of old-fashioned decorum with which her niece
+would, no doubt, gladly have dispensed, withdrew her thenceforward from
+all further participation in the gaieties of the town.
+
+Captain Barton was a constant visitor, as well as a frequent guest at
+the house, and was permitted all the privileges of intimacy which a
+betrothed suitor is usually accorded. Such was the relation of parties,
+when the mysterious circumstances which darken this narrative first
+begun to unfold themselves.
+
+Lady L---- resided in a handsome mansion at the north side of Dublin,
+and Captain Barton's lodgings, as we have already said, were situated at
+the south. The distance intervening was considerable, and it was Captain
+Barton's habit generally to walk home without an attendant, as often as
+he passed the evening with the old lady and her fair charge.
+
+His shortest way in such nocturnal walks, lay, for a considerable space,
+through a line of street which had as yet merely been laid out, and
+little more than the foundations of the houses constructed.
+
+One night, shortly after his engagement with Miss Montague had
+commenced, he happened to remain unusually late, in company with her and
+Lady L----. The conversation had turned upon the evidences of
+revelation, which he had disputed with the callous scepticism of a
+confirmed infidel. What were called "French principles," had in those
+days found their way a good deal into fashionable society, especially
+that portion of it which professed allegiance to Whiggism, and neither
+the old lady nor her charge were so perfectly free from the taint, as to
+look upon Mr. Barton's views as any serious objection to the proposed
+union.
+
+The discussion had degenerated into one upon the supernatural and the
+marvellous, in which he had pursued precisely the same line of argument
+and ridicule. In all this, it is but truth to state, Captain Barton, was
+guilty of no affectation--the doctrines upon which he insisted, were, in
+reality, but, too truly the basis of his own fixed belief, if so it
+might be called; and perhaps not the least strange of the many strange
+circumstances connected with my narrative, was the fact, that the
+subject of the fearful influences I am about to describe, was himself,
+from the deliberate conviction of years, an utter disbeliever in what
+are usually termed preternatural agencies.
+
+It was considerably past midnight when Mr. Barton took his leave, and
+set out upon his solitary walk homeward. He had now reached the lonely
+road, with its unfinished dwarf walls tracing the foundations of the
+projected row of houses on either side--the moon was shining mistily,
+and its imperfect light made the road he trod but additionally
+dreary--that utter silence which has in it something indefinably
+exciting, reigned there, and made the sound of his steps, which alone
+broke it, unnaturally loud and distinct.
+
+He had proceeded thus some way, when he, on a sudden, heard other
+footfalls, pattering at a measured pace, and, as it seemed, about two
+score steps behind him.
+
+The suspicion of being dogged is at all times unpleasant; it is,
+however, especially so in a spot so lonely; and this suspicion became so
+strong in the mind of Captain Barton, that he abruptly turned about to
+confront his pursuer, but, though there was quite sufficient moonlight
+to disclose any object upon the road he had traversed, no form of any
+kind was visible there.
+
+The steps he had heard could not have been the reverberation of his own,
+for he stamped his foot upon the ground, and walked briskly up and
+down, in the vain attempt to awake an echo; though by no means a
+fanciful person, therefore he was at last fain to charge the sounds upon
+his imagination, and treat them as an illusion. Thus satisfying himself,
+he resumed his walk, and before he had proceeded a dozen paces, the
+mysterious footfall was again audible from behind, and this time, as if
+with the special design of showing that the sounds were not the
+responses of an echo--the steps sometimes slackened nearly to a halt,
+and sometimes hurried for six or eight strides to a run, and again
+abated to a walk.
+
+Captain Barton, as before, turned suddenly round, and with the same
+result--no object was visible above the deserted level of the road. He
+walked back over the same ground, determined that, whatever might have
+been the cause of the sounds which had so disconcerted him, it should
+not escape his search--the endeavour, however, was unrewarded.
+
+In spite of all his scepticism, he felt something like a superstitious
+fear stealing fast upon him, and with these unwonted and uncomfortable
+sensations, he once more turned and pursued his way. There was no
+repetition of these haunting sounds, until he had reached the point
+where he had last stopped to retrace his steps--here they were
+resumed--and with sudden starts of running, which threatened to bring
+the unseen pursuer up to the alarmed pedestrian.
+
+Captain Barton arrested his course as formerly--the unaccountable nature
+of the occurrence filled him with vague and disagreeable sensations--and
+yielding to the excitement that was gaining upon him, he shouted
+sternly, "Who goes there?" The sound of one's own voice, thus exerted,
+in utter solitude, and followed by total silence, has in it something
+unpleasantly dismaying, and he felt a degree of nervousness which,
+perhaps, from no cause had he ever known before.
+
+To the very end of this solitary street the steps pursued him--and it
+required a strong effort of stubborn pride on his part, to resist the
+impulse that prompted him every moment to run for safety at the top of
+his speed. It was not until he had reached his lodging, and sate by his
+own fire-side, that he felt sufficiently reassured to rearrange and
+reconsider in his own mind the occurrences which had so discomposed him.
+So little a matter, after all, is sufficient to upset the pride of
+scepticism and vindicate the old simple laws of nature within us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WATCHER.
+
+
+Mr. Barton was next morning sitting at a late breakfast, reflecting upon
+the incidents of the previous night, with more of inquisitiveness than
+awe, so speedily do gloomy impressions upon the fancy disappear under
+the cheerful influence of day, when a letter just delivered by the
+postman was placed upon the table before him.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in the address of this missive, except
+that it was written in a hand which he did not know--perhaps it was
+disguised--for the tall narrow characters were sloped backward; and with
+the self-inflicted suspense which we often see practised in such cases,
+he puzzled over the inscription for a full minute before he broke the
+seal. When he did so, he read the following words, written in the same
+hand:--
+
+
+"Mr. Barton, late captain of the 'Dolphin,' is warned of DANGER. He will
+do wisely to avoid ---- street--[here the locality of his last night's
+adventure was named]--if he walks there as usual he will meet with
+something unlucky--let him take warning, once for all, for he has reason
+to dread
+
+        "THE WATCHER."
+
+
+Captain Barton read and re-read this strange effusion; in every light
+and in every direction he turned it over and over; he examined the
+paper on which it was written, and scrutinized the hand-writing once
+more. Defeated here, he turned to the seal; it was nothing but a patch
+of wax, upon which the accidental impression of a thumb was imperfectly
+visible.
+
+There was not the slightest mark, or clue of any kind, to lead him to
+even a guess as to its possible origin. The writer's object seemed a
+friendly one, and yet he subscribed himself as one whom he had "reason
+to dread." Altogether the letter, its author, and its real purpose were
+to him an inexplicable puzzle, and one, moreover, unpleasantly
+suggestive, in his mind, of other associations connected with his last
+night's adventure.
+
+In obedience to some feeling--perhaps of pride--Mr. Barton did not
+communicate, even to his intended bride, the occurrences which I have
+just detailed. Trifling as they might appear, they had in reality most
+disagreeably affected his imagination, and he cared not to disclose,
+even to the young lady in question, what she might possibly look upon as
+evidences of weakness. The letter might very well be but a hoax, and the
+mysterious footfall but a delusion or a trick. But although he affected
+to treat the whole affair as unworthy of a thought, it yet haunted him
+pertinaciously, tormenting him with perplexing doubts, and depressing
+him with undefined apprehensions. Certain it is, that for a considerable
+time afterwards he carefully avoided the street indicated in the letter
+as the scene of danger.
+
+It was not until about a week after the receipt of the letter which I
+have transcribed, that anything further occurred to remind Captain
+Barton of its contents, or to counteract the gradual disappearance from
+his mind of the disagreeable impressions then received.
+
+He was returning one night, after the interval I have stated, from the
+theatre, which was then situated in Crow-street, and having there seen
+Miss Montague and Lady L---- into their carriage, he loitered for some
+time with two or three acquaintances.
+
+With these, however, he parted close to the college, and pursued his way
+alone. It was now fully one o'clock, and the streets were quite
+deserted. During the whole of his walk with the companions from whom he
+had just parted, he had been at times painfully aware of the sound of
+steps, as it seemed, dogging them on their way.
+
+Once or twice he had looked back, in the uneasy anticipation that he was
+again about to experience the same mysterious annoyances which had so
+disconcerted him a week before, and earnestly hoping that he might see
+some form to account naturally for the sounds. But the street was
+deserted--no one was visible.
+
+Proceeding now quite alone upon his homeward way, he grew really nervous
+and uncomfortable, as he became sensible, with increased distinctness,
+of the well-known and now absolutely dreaded sounds.
+
+By the side of the dead wall which bounded the college park, the sounds
+followed, recommencing almost simultaneously with his own steps. The
+same unequal pace--sometimes slow, sometimes for a score yards or so,
+quickened almost to a run--was audible from behind him. Again and again
+he turned; quickly and stealthily he glanced over his shoulder--almost
+at every half-dozen steps; but no one was visible.
+
+The irritation of this intangible and unseen pursuit became gradually
+all but intolerable; and when at last he reached his home, his nerves
+were strung to such a pitch of excitement that he could not rest, and
+did not attempt even to lie down until after the daylight had broken.
+
+He was awakened by a knock at his chamber-door, and his servant
+entering, handed him several letters which had just been received by the
+penny post. One among them instantly arrested his attention--a single
+glance at the direction aroused him thoroughly. He at once recognized its
+character, and read as follows:--
+
+
+"You may as well think, Captain Barton, to escape from your own shadow
+as from me; do what you may, I will see you as often as I please, and
+you shall see me, for I do not want to hide myself, as you fancy. Do not
+let it trouble your rest, Captain Barton; for, with a _good conscience_,
+what need you fear from the eye of
+
+        "THE WATCHER."
+
+It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the feelings that accompanied a
+perusal of this strange communication. Captain Barton was observed to be
+unusually absent and out of spirits for several days afterwards, but no
+one divined the cause.
+
+Whatever he might think as to the phantom steps which followed him,
+there could be no possible illusion about the letters he had received;
+and, to say the least, their immediate sequence upon the mysterious
+sounds which had haunted him, was an odd coincidence.
+
+The whole circumstance was, in his own mind, vaguely and instinctively
+connected with certain passages in his past life, which, of all others,
+he hated to remember.
+
+It happened, however, that in addition to his own approaching nuptials,
+Captain Barton had just then--fortunately, perhaps, for himself--some
+business of an engrossing kind connected with the adjustment of a large
+and long-litigated claim upon certain properties.
+
+The hurry and excitement of business had its natural effect in gradually
+dispelling the gloom which had for a time occasionally oppressed him,
+and in a little while his spirits had entirely recovered their
+accustomed tone.
+
+During all this time, however, he was, now and then, dismayed by
+indistinct and half-heard repetitions of the same annoyance, and that in
+lonely places, in the day-time as well as after nightfall. These
+renewals of the strange impressions from which he had suffered so much,
+were, however, desultory and faint, insomuch that often he really could
+not, to his own satisfaction, distinguish between them and the mere
+suggestions of an excited imagination.
+
+One evening he walked down to the House of Commons with a Member, an
+acquaintance of his and mine. This was one of the few occasions upon
+which I have been in company with Captain Barton. As we walked down
+together, I observed that he became absent and silent, and to a degree
+that seemed to argue the pressure of some urgent and absorbing anxiety.
+
+I afterwards learned that during the whole of our walk, he had heard the
+well-known footsteps tracking him as we proceeded.
+
+This, however, was the last time he suffered from this phase of the
+persecution, of which he was already the anxious victim. A new and a
+very different one was about to be presented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AN ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+Of the new series of impressions which were afterwards gradually to work
+out his destiny, I that evening witnessed the first; and but for its
+relation to the train of events which followed, the incident would
+scarcely have been now remembered by me.
+
+As we were walking in at the passage from College-Green, a man, of whom
+I remember only that he was short in stature, looked like a foreigner,
+and wore a kind of fur travelling-cap, walked very rapidly, and as if
+under fierce excitement, directly towards us, muttering to himself, fast
+and vehemently the while.
+
+This odd-looking person walked straight toward Barton, who was foremost
+of the three, and halted, regarding him for a moment or two with a look
+of maniacal menace and fury; and then turning about as abruptly, he
+walked before us at the same agitated pace, and disappeared at a side
+passage. I do distinctly remember being a good deal shocked at the
+countenance and bearing of this man, which indeed irresistibly impressed
+me with an undefined sense of danger, such as I have never felt before
+or since from the presence of anything human; but these sensations were,
+on my part, far from amounting to anything so disconcerting as to flurry
+or excite me--I had seen only a singularly evil countenance, agitated,
+as it seemed, with the excitement of madness.
+
+I was absolutely astonished, however, at the effect of this apparition
+upon Captain Barton. I knew him to be a man of proud courage and
+coolness in real danger--a circumstance which made his conduct upon this
+occasion the more conspicuously odd. He recoiled a step or two as the
+stranger advanced, and clutched my arm in silence, with what seemed to
+be a spasm of agony or terror! and then, as the figure disappeared,
+shoving me roughly back, he followed it for a few paces, stopped in
+great disorder, and sat down upon a form. I never beheld a countenance
+more ghastly and haggard.
+
+"For God's sake, Barton, what is the matter?" said ----, our companion,
+really alarmed at his appearance. "You're not hurt, are you?--or unwell?
+What is it?"
+
+"What did he say?--I did not hear it--what was it?" asked Barton, wholly
+disregarding the question.
+
+"Nonsense," said ----, greatly surprised; "who cares what the fellow
+said. You are unwell, Barton--decidedly unwell; let me call a coach."
+
+"Unwell! No--not unwell," he said, evidently making an effort to recover
+his self-possession; "but, to say the truth, I am fatigued--a little
+over-worked--and perhaps over anxious. You know I have been in chancery,
+and the winding up of a suit is always a nervous affair. I have felt
+uncomfortable all this evening; but I am better now. Come, come--shall
+we go on?"
+
+"No, no. Take my advice, Barton, and go home; you really do need rest!
+you are looking quite ill. I really do insist on your allowing me to see
+you home," replied his friend.
+
+I seconded ----'s advice, the more readily as it was obvious that Barton
+was not himself disinclined to be persuaded. He left us, declining our
+offered escort. I was not sufficiently intimate with ---- to discuss the
+scene we had both just witnessed. I was, however, convinced from his
+manner in the few common-place comments and regrets we exchanged, that
+he was just as little satisfied as I with the extempore plea of illness
+with which he had accounted for the strange exhibition, and that we were
+both agreed in suspecting some lurking mystery in the matter.
+
+I called next day at Barton's lodgings, to enquire for him, and learned
+from the servant that he had not left his room since his return the
+night before; but that he was not seriously indisposed, and hoped to be
+out in a few days. That evening he sent for Dr. R----, then in large and
+fashionable practice in Dublin, and their interview was, it is said, an
+odd one.
+
+He entered into a detail of his own symptoms in an abstracted and
+desultory way which seemed to argue a strange want of interest in his
+own cure, and, at all events, made it manifest that there was some topic
+engaging his mind of more engrossing importance than his present
+ailment. He complained of occasional palpitations and headache.
+
+Doctor R----, asked him among other questions, whether there was any
+irritating circumstance or anxiety then occupying his thoughts. This he
+denied quickly and almost peevishly; and the physician thereupon
+declared his opinion, that there was nothing amiss except some slight
+derangement of the digestion, for which he accordingly wrote a
+prescription, and was about to withdraw, when Mr. Barton, with the air
+of a man who recollects a topic which had nearly escaped him, recalled
+him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Doctor, but I really almost forgot; will you permit
+me to ask you two or three medical questions--rather odd ones, perhaps,
+but a wager depends upon their solution, you will, I hope, excuse my
+unreasonableness."
+
+The physician readily undertook to satisfy the inquirer.
+
+Barton seemed to have some difficulty about opening the proposed
+interrogatories, for he was silent for a minute, then walked to his
+book-case, and returned as he had gone; at last he sat down and said--
+
+"You'll think them very childish questions, but I can't recover my wager
+without a decision; so I must put them. I want to know first about
+lock-jaw. If a man actually has had that complaint, and appears to have
+died of it--so much so, that a physician of average skill pronounces him
+actually dead--may he, after all, recover?"
+
+The physician smiled, and shook his head.
+
+"But--but a blunder may be made," resumed Barton. "Suppose an ignorant
+pretender to medical skill; may _he_ be so deceived by any stage of the
+complaint, as to mistake what is only a part of the progress of the
+disease, for death itself?"
+
+"No one who had ever seen death," answered he, "could mistake it in a
+case of lock-jaw."
+
+Barton mused for a few minutes. "I am going to ask you a question,
+perhaps, still more childish; but first, tell me, are the regulations of
+foreign hospitals, such as that of, let us say, Naples, very lax and
+bungling. May not all kinds of blunders and slips occur in their entries
+of names, and soforth?"
+
+Doctor R---- professed his incompetence to answer that query.
+
+"Well, then, Doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will,
+probably, laugh at it; but it must out, nevertheless. Is there any
+disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would have the effect
+of perceptibly contracting the stature, and the whole frame--causing the
+man to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact
+resemblance to himself in every particular--with the one exception, his
+height and bulk; any disease, mark--no matter how rare--how little
+believed in, generally--which could possibly result in producing such an
+effect?"
+
+The physician replied with a smile, and a very decided negative.
+
+"Tell me, then," said Barton, abruptly, "if a man be in reasonable fear
+of assault from a lunatic who is at large, can he not procure a warrant
+for his arrest and detention?"
+
+"Really that is more a lawyer's question than one in my way," replied
+Dr. R----: "but I believe, on applying to a magistrate, such a course
+would be directed."
+
+The physician then took his leave; but, just as he reached the
+hall-door, remembered that he had left his cane up stairs, and returned.
+His reappearance was awkward, for a piece of paper, which he recognised
+as his own prescription, was slowly burning upon the fire, and Barton
+sitting close by with an expression of settled gloom and dismay.
+
+Doctor R---- had too much tact to observe what presented itself; but he
+had seen quite enough to assure him that the mind, and not the body, of
+Captain Barton was in reality the seat of suffering.
+
+A few days afterwards, the following advertisement appeared in the
+Dublin newspapers.
+
+"If Sylvester Yelland, formerly a foremast-man on board his Majesty's
+frigate Dolphin, or his nearest of kin, will apply to Mr. Hubert Smith,
+attorney, at his office, Dame Street, he or they may hear of something
+greatly to his or their advantage. Admission may be had at any hour up
+to twelve o'clock at night, should parties desire to avoid observation;
+and the strictest secrecy, as to all communications intended to be
+confidential, shall be honourably observed."
+
+The Dolphin, as I have mentioned, was the vessel which Captain Barton
+had commanded; and this circumstance, connected with the extraordinary
+exertions made by the circulation of hand-bills, &c, as well as by
+repeated advertisements, to secure for this strange notice the utmost
+possible publicity, suggested to Dr. R---- the idea that Captain
+Barton's extreme uneasiness was somehow connected with the individual to
+whom the advertisement was addressed, and he himself the author of it.
+
+This, however, it is needless to add, was no more than a conjecture. No
+information whatsoever, as to the real purpose of the advertisement was
+divulged by the agent, nor yet any hint as to who his employer might
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+HE TALKS WITH A CLERGYMAN.
+
+
+Mr. Barton, although he had latterly begun to earn for himself the
+character of an hypochondriac, was yet very far from deserving it.
+Though by no means lively, he had yet, naturally, what are termed "even
+spirits," and was not subject to undue depressions.
+
+He soon, therefore, began to return to his former habits; and one of the
+earliest symptoms of this healthier tone of spirits was, his appearing
+at a grand dinner of the Freemasons, of which worthy fraternity he was
+himself a brother. Barton, who had been at first gloomy and abstracted,
+drank much more freely than was his wont--possibly with the purpose of
+dispelling his own secret anxieties--and under the influence of good
+wine, and pleasant company, became gradually (unlike himself) talkative,
+and even noisy.
+
+It was under this unwonted excitement that he left his company at about
+half-past ten o'clock; and, as conviviality is a strong incentive to
+gallantry, it occurred to him to proceed forthwith to Lady L----'s and
+pass the remainder of the evening with her and his destined bride.
+
+Accordingly, he was soon at ---- street, and chatting gaily with the
+ladies. It is not to be supposed that Captain Barton had exceeded the
+limits which propriety prescribes to good fellowship--he had merely
+taken enough wine to raise his spirits, without, however, in the least
+degree unsteadying his mind, or affecting his manners.
+
+With this undue elevation of spirits had supervened an entire oblivion
+or contempt of those undefined apprehensions which had for so long
+weighed upon his mind, and to a certain extent estranged him from
+society; but as the night wore away, and his artificial gaiety began to
+flag, these painful feelings gradually intruded themselves again, and he
+grew abstracted and anxious as heretofore.
+
+He took his leave at length, with an unpleasant foreboding of some
+coming mischief, and with a mind haunted with a thousand mysterious
+apprehensions, such as, even while he acutely felt their pressure, he,
+nevertheless, inwardly strove, or affected to contemn.
+
+It was this proud defiance of what he regarded as his own weakness,
+which prompted him upon the present occasion to that course which
+brought about the adventure I am now about to relate.
+
+Mr. Barton might have easily called a coach, but he was conscious that
+his strong inclination to do so proceeded from no cause other than what
+he desperately persisted in representing to himself to be his own
+superstitious tremors.
+
+He might also have returned home by a _route_ different from that
+against which he had been warned by his mysterious correspondent; but
+for the same reason he dismissed this idea also, and with a dogged and
+half desperate resolution to force matters to a crisis of some kind, if
+there were any reality in the causes of his former suffering, and if
+not, satisfactorily to bring their delusiveness to the proof, he
+determined to follow precisely the course which he had trodden upon the
+night so painfully memorable in his own mind as that on which his
+strange persecution commenced. Though, sooth to say, the pilot who for
+the first time steers his vessel under the muzzles of a hostile battery,
+never felt his resolution more severely tasked than did Captain Barton
+as he breathlessly pursued this solitary path--a path which, spite of
+every effort of scepticism and reason, he felt to be infested by some
+(as respected _him_) malignant being.
+
+He pursued his way steadily and rapidly, scarcely breathing from
+intensity of suspense; he, however, was troubled by no renewal of the
+dreaded footsteps, and was beginning to feel a return of confidence, as
+more than three-fourths of the way being accomplished with impunity, he
+approached the long line of twinkling oil lamps which indicated the
+frequented streets.
+
+This feeling of self-congratulation was, however, but momentary. The
+report of a musket at some hundred yards behind him, and the whistle of
+a bullet close to his head, disagreeably and startlingly dispelled it.
+His first impulse was to retrace his steps in pursuit of the assassin;
+but the road on either side was, as we have said, embarrassed by the
+foundations of a street, beyond which extended waste fields, full of
+rubbish and neglected lime and brick-kilns, and all now as utterly
+silent as though no sound had ever disturbed their dark and unsightly
+solitude. The futility of, single-handed, attempting, under such
+circumstances, a search for the murderer, was apparent, especially as no
+sound, either of retreating steps or any other kind, was audible to
+direct his pursuit.
+
+With the tumultuous sensations of one whose life has just been exposed
+to a murderous attempt, and whose escape has been the narrowest
+possible, Captain Barton turned again; and without, however, quickening
+his pace actually to a run, hurriedly pursued his way.
+
+He had turned, as I have said, after a pause of a few seconds, and had
+just commenced his rapid retreat, when on a sudden he met the
+well-remembered little man in the fur cap. The encounter was but
+momentary. The figure was walking at the same exaggerated pace, and with
+the same strange air of menace as before; and as it passed him, he
+thought he heard it say, in a furious whisper, "Still alive--still
+alive!"
+
+The state of Mr. Barton's spirits began now to work a corresponding
+alteration in his health and looks, and to such a degree that it was
+impossible that the change should escape general remark.
+
+For some reasons, known but to himself, he took no step whatsoever to
+bring the attempt upon his life, which he had so narrowly escaped, under
+the notice of the authorities; on the contrary, he kept it jealously to
+himself; and it was not for many weeks after the occurrence that he
+mentioned it, and then in strict confidence, to a gentleman, whom the
+torments of his mind at last compelled him to consult.
+
+Spite of his blue devils, however, poor Barton, having no satisfactory
+reason to render to the public for any undue remissness in the
+attentions exacted by the relation subsisting between him and Miss
+Montague was obliged to exert himself, and present to the world a
+confident and cheerful bearing.
+
+The true source of his sufferings, and every circumstance connected with
+them, he guarded with a reserve so jealous, that it seemed dictated by
+at least a suspicion that the origin of his strange persecution was
+known to himself, and that it was of a nature which, upon his own
+account, he could not or dared not disclose.
+
+The mind thus turned in upon itself, and constantly occupied with a
+haunting anxiety which it dared not reveal or confide to any human
+breast, became daily more excited, and, of course, more vividly
+impressible, by a system of attack which operated through the nervous
+system; and in this state he was destined to sustain, with increasing
+frequency, the stealthy visitations of that apparition which from the
+first had seemed to possess so terrible a hold upon his imagination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about this time that Captain Barton called upon the then
+celebrated preacher, Dr. ----, with whom he had a slight acquaintance,
+and an extraordinary conversation ensued.
+
+The divine was seated in his chambers in college, surrounded with works
+upon his favourite pursuit, and deep in theology, when Barton was
+announced.
+
+There was something at once embarrassed and excited in his manner,
+which, along with his wan and haggard countenance, impressed the student
+with the unpleasant consciousness that his visitor must have recently
+suffered terribly indeed, to account for an alteration so
+striking--almost shocking.
+
+After the usual interchange of polite greeting, and a few common-place
+remarks, Captain Barton, who obviously perceived the surprise which his
+visit had excited, and which Doctor ---- was unable wholly to conceal,
+interrupted a brief pause by remarking--
+
+"This is a strange call, Doctor ----, perhaps scarcely warranted by an
+acquaintance so slight as mine with you. I should not under ordinary
+circumstances have ventured to disturb you; but my visit is neither an
+idle nor impertinent intrusion. I am sure you will not so account it,
+when I tell you how afflicted I am."
+
+Doctor ---- interrupted him with assurances such as good breeding
+suggested, and Barton resumed--
+
+"I am come to task your patience by asking your advice. When I say your
+patience, I might, indeed, say more; I might have said your
+humanity--your compassion; for I have been and am a great sufferer."
+
+"My dear sir," replied the churchman, "it will, indeed, afford me
+infinite gratification if I can give you comfort in any distress of
+mind; but--you know----"
+
+"I know what you would say," resumed Barton, quickly; "I am an
+unbeliever, and, therefore, incapable of deriving help from religion;
+but don't take that for granted. At least you must not assume that,
+however unsettled my convictions may be, I do not feel a deep--a very
+deep--interest in the subject. Circumstances have lately forced it upon
+my attention, in such a way as to compel me to review the whole
+question in a more candid and teachable spirit, I believe, than I ever
+studied it in before."
+
+"Your difficulties, I take it for granted, refer to the evidences of
+revelation," suggested the clergyman.
+
+"Why--no--not altogether; in fact I am ashamed to say I have not
+considered even my objections sufficiently to state them connectedly;
+but--but there is one subject on which I feel a peculiar interest."
+
+He paused again, and Doctor ---- pressed him to proceed.
+
+"The fact is," said Barton, "whatever may be my uncertainty as to the
+authenticity of what we are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am
+deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond this a
+spiritual world--a system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden
+from us--a system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and
+terribly revealed. I am sure--I _know_," continued Barton, with
+increasing excitement, "that there is a God--a dreadful God--and that
+retribution follows guilt, in ways the most mysterious and
+stupendous--by agencies the most inexplicable and terrific;--there is a
+spiritual system--great God, how I have been convinced!--a system
+malignant, and implacable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I
+am, and have been, suffering the torments of the damned!--yes,
+sir--yes--the fires and frenzy of hell!"
+
+As Barton spoke, his agitation became so vehement that the Divine was
+shocked, and even alarmed. The wild and excited rapidity with which he
+spoke, and, above all, the indefinable horror, that stamped his
+features, afforded a contrast to his ordinary cool and unimpassioned
+self-possession striking and painful in the last degree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MR. BARTON STATES HIS CASE.
+
+
+"My dear sir," said Doctor ----, after a brief pause, "I fear you have
+been very unhappy, indeed; but I venture to predict that the depression
+under which you labour will be found to originate in purely physical
+causes, and that with a change of air, and the aid of a few tonics, your
+spirits will return, and the tone of your mind be once more cheerful and
+tranquil as heretofore. There was, after all, more truth than we are
+quite willing to admit in the classic theories which assigned the undue
+predominance of any one affection of the mind, to the undue action or
+torpidity of one or other of our bodily organs. Believe me, that a
+little attention to diet, exercise, and the other essentials of health,
+under competent direction, will make you as much yourself as you can
+wish."
+
+"Doctor ----" said Barton, with something like a shudder, "I _cannot_
+delude myself with such a hope. I have no hope to cling to but one, and
+that is, that by some other spiritual agency more potent than that which
+tortures me, _it_ may be combated, and I delivered. If this may not be,
+I am lost--now and for ever lost."
+
+"But, Mr. Barton, you must remember," urged his companion, "that others
+have suffered as you have done, and----"
+
+"No, no, no," interrupted he, with irritability--"no, sir, I am not a
+credulous--far from a superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much
+the reverse--too sceptical, too slow of belief; but unless I were one
+whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to contemn the
+repeated, the _perpetual_ evidence of my own senses, I am now--now at
+last constrained to believe--I have no escape from the conviction--the
+overwhelming certainty--that I am haunted and dogged, go where I may,
+by--by a DEMON!"
+
+There was a preternatural energy of horror in Barton's face, as, with
+its damp and death-like lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus
+delivered himself.
+
+"God help you, my poor friend," said Dr. ----, much shocked, "God help
+you; for, indeed, you _are_ a sufferer, however your sufferings may have
+been caused."
+
+"Ay, ay, God help me," echoed Barton, sternly; "but _will_ he help
+me--will he help me?"
+
+"Pray to him--pray in an humble and trusting spirit," said he.
+
+"Pray, pray," echoed he again; "I can't pray--I could as easily move a
+mountain by an effort of my will. I have not belief enough to pray;
+there is something within me that will not pray. You prescribe
+impossibilities--literal impossibilities."
+
+"You will not find it so, if you will but try," said Doctor ----.
+
+"Try! I _have_ tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion; and,
+sometimes, terror; I have tried in vain, and more than in vain. The
+awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity oppresses and maddens
+my brain whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the Creator; I
+recoil from the effort scared. I tell you, Doctor ----, if I am to be
+saved, it must be by other means. The idea of an eternal Creator is to
+me intolerable--my mind cannot support it."
+
+"Say, then, my dear sir," urged he, "say how you would have me serve
+you--what you would learn of me--what I can do or say to relieve you?"
+
+"Listen to me first," replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an
+effort to suppress his excitement, "listen to me while I detail the
+circumstances of the persecution under which my life has become all but
+intolerable--a persecution which has made me fear _death_ and the world
+beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence."
+
+Barton then proceeded to relate the circumstances which I have already
+detailed, and then continued:
+
+"This has now become habitual--an accustomed thing. I do not mean the
+actual seeing him in the flesh--thank God, _that_ at least is not
+permitted daily. Thank God, from the ineffable horrors of that
+visitation I have been mercifully allowed intervals of repose, though
+none of security; but from the consciousness that a malignant spirit is
+following and watching me wherever I go, I have never, for a single
+instant, a temporary respite. I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of
+despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after
+me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the night-time,
+while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me
+with hideous crimes, and--great God!--threatening me with coming
+vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear _that_?" he cried with a
+horrible smile of triumph; "there, there, will that convince you?"
+
+The clergyman felt a chill of horror steal over him, while, during the
+wail of a sudden gust of wind, he heard, or fancied he heard, the half
+articulate sounds of rage and derision mingling in the sough.
+
+"Well, what do you think of _that_?" at length Barton cried, drawing a
+long breath through his teeth.
+
+"I heard the wind," said Doctor ----.
+
+"What should I think of it--what is there remarkable about it?"
+
+"The prince of the powers of the air," muttered Barton, with a shudder.
+
+"Tut, tut! my dear sir," said the student, with an effort to reassure
+himself; for though it was broad daylight, there was nevertheless
+something disagreeably contagious in the nervous excitement under which
+his visitor so miserably suffered. "You must not give way to those wild
+fancies; you must resist these impulses of the imagination."
+
+"Ay, ay; 'resist the devil and he will flee from thee,'" said Barton, in
+the same tone; "but _how_ resist him? ay, there it is--there is the rub.
+What--_what_ am I to do? what _can_ I do?"
+
+"My dear sir, this _is_ fancy," said the man of folios; "you are your
+own tormentor."
+
+"No, no, sir--fancy has no part in it," answered Barton, somewhat
+sternly. "Fancy! was it that made you, as well as me, hear, but this
+moment, those accents of hell? Fancy, indeed! No, no."
+
+"But you have seen this person frequently," said the ecclesiastic; "why
+have you not accosted or secured him? Is it not a little precipitate, to
+say no more, to assume, as you have done, the existence of preternatural
+agency, when, after all, everything may be easily accountable, if only
+proper means were taken to sift the matter."
+
+"There are circumstances connected with this--this _appearance_," said
+Barton, "which it is needless to disclose, but which to _me_ are proof
+of its horrible nature. I know that the being that follows me is not
+human--I say I know this; I could prove it to your own conviction." He
+paused for a minute, and then added, "And as to accosting it, I dare
+not, I could not; when I see it I am powerless; I stand in the gaze of
+death, in the triumphant presence of infernal power and malignity. My
+strength, and faculties, and memory, all forsake me. O God, I fear, sir,
+you know not what you speak of. Mercy, mercy; heaven have pity on me!"
+
+He leaned his elbow on the table, and passed his hand across his eyes,
+as if to exclude some image of horror, muttering the last words of the
+sentence he had just concluded, again and again.
+
+"Doctor ----," he said, abruptly raising himself, and looking full upon
+the clergyman with an imploring eye, "I know you will do for me whatever
+may be done. You know now fully the circumstances and the nature of my
+affliction. I tell you I cannot help myself; I cannot hope to escape; I
+am utterly passive. I conjure you, then, to weigh my case well, and if
+anything may be done for me by vicarious supplication--by the
+intercession of the good--or by any aid or influence whatsoever, I
+implore of you, I adjure you in the name of the Most High, give me the
+benefit of that influence--deliver me from the body of this death.
+Strive for me, pity me; I know you will; you cannot refuse this; it is
+the purpose and object of my visit. Send me away with some hope, however
+little, some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve myself
+to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence
+has been transformed."
+
+Doctor ---- assured him that all he could do was to pray earnestly for
+him, and that so much he would not fail to do. They parted with a
+hurried and melancholy valediction. Barton hastened to the carriage that
+awaited him at the door, drew down the blinds, and drove away, while
+Doctor ---- returned to his chamber, to ruminate at leisure upon the
+strange interview which had just interrupted his studies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SEEN AGAIN.
+
+
+It was not to be expected that Captain Barton's changed and eccentric
+habits should long escape remark and discussion. Various were the
+theories suggested to account for it. Some attributed the alteration to
+the pressure of secret pecuniary embarrassments; others to a repugnance
+to fulfil an engagement into which he was presumed to have too
+precipitately entered; and others, again, to the supposed incipiency of
+mental disease, which latter, indeed, was the most plausible as well as
+the most generally, received, of the hypotheses circulated in the gossip
+of the day.
+
+From the very commencement of this change, at first so gradual in its
+advances, Miss Montague had of course been aware of it. The intimacy
+involved in their peculiar relation, as well as the near interest which
+it inspired afforded, in her case, a like opportunity and motive for the
+successful exercise of that keen and penetrating observation peculiar to
+her sex.
+
+His visits became, at length, so interrupted, and his manner, while they
+lasted, so abstracted, strange, and agitated, that Lady L----, after
+hinting her anxiety and her suspicions more than once, at length
+distinctly stated her anxiety, and pressed for an explanation.
+
+The explanation was given, and although its nature at first relieved the
+worst solicitudes of the old lady and her niece, yet the circumstances
+which attended it, and the really dreadful consequences which it
+obviously indicated, as regarded the spirits, and indeed the reason of
+the now wretched man, who made the strange declaration, were enough,
+upon little reflection, to fill their minds with perturbation and alarm.
+
+General Montague, the young lady's father, at length arrived. He had
+himself slightly known Barton, some ten or twelve years previously, and
+being aware of his fortune and connexions, was disposed to regard him as
+an unexceptionable and indeed a most desirable match for his daughter.
+He laughed at the story of Barton's supernatural visitations, and lost
+no time in calling upon his intended son-in-law.
+
+"My dear Barton," he continued, gaily, after a little conversation, "my
+sister tells me that you are a victim to blue devils, in quite a new and
+original shape."
+
+Barton changed countenance, and sighed profoundly.
+
+"Come, come; I protest this will never do," continued the General; "you
+are more like a man on his way to the gallows than to the altar. These
+devils have made quite a saint of you."
+
+Barton made an effort to change the conversation.
+
+"No, no, it won't do," said his visitor laughing; "I am resolved to say
+what I have to say upon this magnificent mock mystery of yours. You must
+not be angry, but really it is too bad to see you at your time of life,
+absolutely frightened into good behaviour, like a naughty child by a
+bugaboo, and as far as I can learn, a very contemptible one. Seriously,
+I have been a good deal annoyed at what they tell me; but at the same
+time thoroughly convinced that there is nothing in the matter that may
+not cleared up, with a little attention and management, within a week at
+furthest."
+
+"Ah, General, you do not know--" he began.
+
+"Yes, but I do know quite enough to warrant my confidence," interrupted
+the soldier, "don't I know that all your annoyance proceeds from the
+occasional appearance of a certain little man in a cap and great-coat,
+with a red vest and a bad face, who follows you about, and pops upon you
+at corners of lanes, and throws you into ague fits. Now, my dear fellow,
+I'll make it my business to catch this mischievous little mountebank,
+and either beat him to a jelly with my own hands, or have him whipped
+through the town, at the cart's-tail, before a month passes."
+
+"If _you_ knew what _I_ knew," said Barton, with gloomy agitation, "you
+would speak very differently. Don't imagine that I am so weak as to
+assume, without proof the most overwhelming, the conclusion to which I
+have been forced--the proofs are here, locked up here." As he spoke he
+tapped upon his breast, and with an anxious sigh continued to walk up
+and down the room.
+
+"Well, well, Barton," said his visitor, "I'll wager a rump and a dozen I
+collar the ghost, and convince even you before many days are over."
+
+He was running on in the same strain when he was suddenly arrested, and
+not a little shocked, by observing Barton, who had approached the
+window, stagger slowly back, like one who had received a stunning blow;
+his arm extended toward the street--his face and his very lips white as
+ashes--while he muttered, "There--by heaven!--there--there!"
+
+General Montague started mechanically to his feet, and from the window
+of the drawing-room, saw a figure corresponding as well as his hurry
+would permit him to discern, with the description of the person, whose
+appearance so persistently disturbed the repose of his friend.
+
+The figure was just turning from the rails of the area upon which it had
+been leaning, and, without waiting to see more, the old gentleman
+snatched his cane and hat, and rushed down the stairs and into the
+street, in the furious hope of securing the person, and punishing the
+audacity of the mysterious stranger.
+
+He looked round him, but in vain, for any trace of the person he had
+himself distinctly seen. He ran breathlessly to the nearest corner,
+expecting to see from thence the retiring figure, but no such form was
+visible. Back and forward, from crossing to crossing, he ran, at fault,
+and it was not until the curious gaze and laughing countenances of the
+passers-by reminded him of the absurdity of his pursuit, that he
+checked his hurried pace, lowered his walking cane from the menacing
+altitude which he had mechanically given it, adjusted his hat, and
+walked composedly back again, inwardly vexed and flurried. He found
+Barton pale and trembling in every joint; they both remained silent,
+though under emotions very different. At last Barton whispered, "You saw
+it?"
+
+"_It!_--him--some one--you mean--to be sure I did," replied Montague,
+testily. "But where is the good or the harm of seeing him? The fellow
+runs like a lamp-lighter. I wanted to _catch_ him, but he had stole away
+before I could reach the hall-door. However, it is no great matter; next
+time, I dare say, I'll do better; and egad, if I once come within reach
+of him, I'll introduce his shoulders to the weight of my cane."
+
+Notwithstanding General Montague's undertakings and exhortations,
+however, Barton continued to suffer from the self-same unexplained
+cause; go how, when, or where he would, he was still constantly dogged
+or confronted by the being who had established over him so horrible an
+influence.
+
+Nowhere and at no time was he secure against the odious appearance which
+haunted him with such diabolic perseverance.
+
+His depression, misery, and excitement became more settled and alarming
+every day, and the mental agonies that ceaselessly preyed upon him,
+began at last so sensibly to affect his health, that Lady L---- and
+General Montague succeeded, without, indeed, much difficulty, in
+persuading him to try a short tour on the Continent, in the hope that an
+entire change of scene would, at all events, have the effect of breaking
+through the influences of local association, which the more sceptical of
+his friends assumed to be by no means inoperative in suggesting and
+perpetuating what they conceived to be a mere form of nervous illusion.
+
+General Montague indeed was persuaded that the figure which haunted his
+intended son-in-law was by no means the creation of his imagination,
+but, on the contrary, a substantial form of flesh and blood, animated by
+a resolution, perhaps with some murderous object in perspective, to
+watch and follow the unfortunate gentleman.
+
+Even this hypothesis was not a very pleasant one; yet it was plain that
+if Barton could ever be convinced that there was nothing preternatural
+in the phenomenon which he had hitherto regarded in that light, the
+affair would lose all its terrors in his eyes, and wholly cease to
+exercise upon his health and spirits the baleful influence which it had
+hitherto done. He therefore reasoned, that if the annoyance were
+actually escaped by mere locomotion and change of scene, it obviously
+could not have originated in any supernatural agency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FLIGHT.
+
+
+Yielding to their persuasions, Barton left Dublin for England,
+accompanied by General Montague. They posted rapidly to London, and
+thence to Dover, whence they took the packet with a fair wind for
+Calais. The General's confidence in the result of the expedition on
+Barton's spirits had risen day by day, since their departure from the
+shores of Ireland; for to the inexpressible relief and delight of the
+latter, he had not since then, so much as even once fancied a repetition
+of those impressions which had, when at home, drawn him gradually down
+to the very depths of despair.
+
+This exemption from what he had begun to regard as the inevitable
+condition of his existence, and the sense of security which began to
+pervade his mind, were inexpressibly delightful; and in the exultation
+of what he considered his deliverance, he indulged in a thousand happy
+anticipations for a future into which so lately he had hardly dared to
+look; and in short, both he and his companion secretly congratulated
+themselves upon the termination of that persecution which had been to
+its immediate victim a source of such unspeakable agony.
+
+It was a beautiful day, and a crowd of idlers stood upon the jetty to
+receive the packet, and enjoy the bustle of the new arrivals. Montague
+walked a few paces in advance of his friend, and as he made his way
+through the crowd, a little man touched his arm, and said to him, in a
+broad provincial _patois_--
+
+"Monsieur is walking too fast; he will lose his sick comrade in the
+throng, for, by my faith, the poor gentleman seems to be fainting."
+
+Montague turned quickly, and observed that Barton did indeed look deadly
+pale. He hastened to his side.
+
+"My dear fellow, are you ill?" he asked anxiously.
+
+The question was unheeded and twice, repeated, ere Barton stammered--
+
+"I saw him--by----, I saw him!"
+
+"_Him!_--the wretch--who--where now?--where is he?" cried Montague,
+looking around him.
+
+"I saw him--but he is gone," repeated Barton, faintly.
+
+"But where--where? For God's sake speak," urged Montague, vehemently.
+
+"It is but this moment--_here_," said he.
+
+"But what did he look like--what had he on--what did he wear--quick,
+quick," urged his excited companion, ready to dart among the crowd and
+collar the delinquent on the spot.
+
+"He touched your arm--he spoke to you--he pointed to me. God be merciful
+to me, there is no escape," said Barton, in the low, subdued tones of
+despair.
+
+Montague had already bustled away in all the flurry of mingled hope and
+rage; but though the singular _personnel_ of the stranger who had
+accosted him was vividly impressed upon his recollection, he failed to
+discover among the crowd even the slightest resemblance to him.
+
+After a fruitless search, in which he enlisted the services of several
+of the by-standers, who aided all the more zealously, as they believed
+he had been robbed, he at length, out of breath and baffled, gave over
+the attempt.
+
+"Ah, my friend, it won't do," said Barton, with the faint voice and
+bewildered, ghastly look of one who had been stunned by some mortal
+shock; "there is no use in contending; whatever it is, the dreadful
+association between me and it, is now established--I shall never
+escape--never!"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Barton; don't talk so," said Montague with
+something at once of irritation and dismay; "you must not, I say; we'll
+jockey the scoundrel yet; never mind, I say--never mind."
+
+It was, however, but labour lost to endeavour henceforward to inspire
+Barton with one ray of hope; he became desponding.
+
+This intangible, and, as it seemed, utterly inadequate influence was
+fast destroying his energies of intellect, character, and health. His
+first object was now to return to Ireland, there, as he believed, and
+now almost hoped, speedily to die.
+
+To Ireland accordingly he came and one of the first faces he saw upon
+the shore, was again that of his implacable and dreaded attendant.
+Barton seemed at last to have lost not only all enjoyment and every hope
+in existence, but all independence of will besides. He now submitted
+himself passively to the management of the friends most nearly
+interested in his welfare.
+
+With the apathy of entire despair, he implicitly assented to whatever
+measures they suggested and advised; and as a last resource, it was
+determined to remove him to a house of Lady L----'s, in the
+neighbourhood of Clontarf, where, with the advice of his medical
+attendant, who persisted in his opinion that the whole train of
+consequences resulted merely from some nervous derangement, it was
+resolved that he was to confine himself, strictly to the house, and to
+make use only of those apartments which commanded a view of an enclosed
+yard, the gates of which were to be kept jealously locked.
+
+Those precautions would certainly secure him against the casual
+appearance of any living form, that his excited imagination might
+possibly confound with the spectre which, as it was contended, his fancy
+recognised in every figure that bore even a distant or general
+resemblance to the peculiarities with which his fancy had at first
+invested it.
+
+A month or six weeks' absolute seclusion under these conditions, it was
+hoped might, by interrupting the series of these terrible impressions,
+gradually dispel the predisposing apprehensions, and the associations
+which had confirmed the supposed disease, and rendered recovery
+hopeless.
+
+Cheerful society and that of his friends was to be constantly supplied,
+and on the whole, very sanguine expectations were indulged in, that
+under the treatment thus detailed, the obstinate hypochondria of the
+patient might at length give way.
+
+Accompanied, therefore, by Lady L----, General Montague and his
+daughter--his own affianced bride--poor Barton--himself never daring to
+cherish a hope of his ultimate emancipation from the horrors under which
+his life was literally wasting away--took possession of the apartments,
+whose situation protected him against the intrusions, from which he
+shrank with such unutterable terror.
+
+After a little time, a steady persistence in this system began to
+manifest its results, in a very marked though gradual improvement, alike
+in the health and spirits of the invalid. Not, indeed, that anything at
+all approaching complete recovery was yet discernible. On the contrary,
+to those who had not seen him since the commencement of his strange
+sufferings, such an alteration would have been apparent as might well
+have shocked them.
+
+The improvement, however, such as it was, was welcomed with gratitude
+and delight, especially by the young lady, whom her attachment to him,
+as well as her now singularly painful position, consequent on his
+protracted illness, rendered an object scarcely one degree less to be
+commiserated than himself.
+
+A week passed--a fortnight--a month--and yet there had been no
+recurrence of the hated visitation. The treatment had, so far forth,
+been followed by complete success. The chain of associations was broken.
+The constant pressure upon the overtasked spirits had been removed, and,
+under these comparatively favourable circumstances, the sense of social
+community with the world about him, and something of human interest, if
+not of enjoyment, began to reanimate him.
+
+It was about this time that Lady L---- who, like most old ladies of the
+day, was deep in family receipts, and a great pretender to medical
+science, dispatched her own maid to the kitchen garden, with a list of
+herbs, which were there to be carefully culled, and brought back to her
+housekeeper for the purpose stated. The handmaiden, however, returned
+with her task scarce half completed, and a good deal flurried and
+alarmed. Her mode of accounting for her precipitate retreat and evident
+agitation was odd, and, to the old lady, startling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOFTENED.
+
+
+It appeared that she had repaired to the kitchen garden, pursuant to her
+mistress's directions, and had there begun to make the specified
+election among the rank and neglected herbs which crowded one corner of
+the enclosure, and while engaged in this pleasant labour, she carelessly
+sang a fragment of an old song, as she said, "to keep herself company."
+She was, however, interrupted by an ill-natured laugh; and, looking up,
+she saw through the old thorn hedge, which surrounded the garden, a
+singularly ill-looking little man, whose countenance wore the stamp of
+menace and malignity, standing close to her, at the other side of the
+hawthorn screen.
+
+She described herself as utterly unable to move or speak, while he
+charged her with a message for Captain Barton; the substance of which
+she distinctly remembered to have been to the effect, that he, Captain
+Barton, must come abroad as usual, and show himself to his friends, out
+of doors, or else prepare for a visit in his own chamber.
+
+On concluding this brief message, the stranger had, with a threatening
+air, got down into the outer ditch, and, seizing the hawthorn stems in
+his hands, seemed on the point of climbing through the fence--a feat
+which might have been accomplished without much difficulty.
+
+Without, of course, awaiting this result, the girl--throwing down her
+treasures of thyme and rosemary--had turned and run, with the swiftness
+of terror, to the house. Lady L---- commanded her, on pain of instant
+dismissal, to observe an absolute silence respecting all that passed of
+the incident which related to Captain Barton; and, at the same time,
+directed instant search to be made by her men, in the garden and the
+fields adjacent. This measure, however, was as usual, unsuccessful, and,
+filled with undefinable misgivings, Lady L---- communicated the incident
+to her brother. The story, however, until long afterwards, went no
+further, and, of course, it was jealously guarded from Barton, who
+continued to amend, though slowly.
+
+Barton now began to walk occasionally in the court-yard which I have
+mentioned, and which being enclosed by a high wall, commanded no view
+beyond its own extent. Here he, therefore, considered himself perfectly
+secure: and, but for a careless violation of orders by one of the
+grooms, he might have enjoyed, at least for some time longer, his
+much-prized immunity. Opening upon the public road, this yard was
+entered by a wooden gate, with a wicket in it, and was further defended
+by an iron gate upon the outside. Strict orders had been given to keep
+both carefully locked; but, spite of these, it had happened that one
+day, as Barton was slowly pacing this narrow enclosure, in his
+accustomed walk, and reaching the further extremity, was turning to
+retrace his steps, he saw the boarded wicket ajar, and the face of his
+tormentor immovably looking at him through the iron bars. For a few
+seconds he stood rivetted to the earth--breathless and bloodless--in the
+fascination of that dreaded gaze, and then fell helplessly insensible,
+upon the pavement.
+
+There he was found a few minutes afterwards, and conveyed to his
+room--the apartment which he was never afterwards to leave alive.
+Henceforward a marked and unaccountable change was observable in the
+tone of his mind. Captain Barton was now no longer the excited and
+despairing man he had been before; a strange alteration had passed upon
+him--an unearthly tranquillity reigned in his mind--it was the
+anticipated stillness of the grave.
+
+"Montague, my friend, this struggle is nearly ended now," he said,
+tranquilly, but with a look of fixed and fearful awe. "I have, at last,
+some comfort from that world of spirits, from which my punishment has
+come. I now know that my sufferings will soon be over."
+
+Montague pressed him to speak on.
+
+"Yes," said he, in a softened voice, "my punishment is nearly ended.
+From sorrow, perhaps I shall never, in time or eternity, escape; but my
+_agony_ is almost over. Comfort has been revealed to me, and what
+remains of my allotted struggle I will bear with submission--even with
+hope."
+
+"I am glad to hear you speak so tranquilly, my dear Barton," said
+Montague; "peace and cheer of mind are all you need to make you what you
+were."
+
+"No, no--I never can be that," said he mournfully. "I am no longer fit
+for life. I am soon to die. I am to see him but once again, and then all
+is ended."
+
+"He said so, then?" suggested Montague.
+
+"_He?_--No, no: good tidings could scarcely come through him; and these
+were good and welcome; and they came so solemnly and sweetly--with
+unutterable love and melancholy, such as I could not--without saying
+more than is needful, or fitting, of other long-past scenes and
+persons--fully explain to you." As Barton said this he shed tears.
+
+"Come, come," said Montague, mistaking the source of his emotions, "you
+must not give way. What is it, after all, but a pack of dreams and
+nonsense; or, at worst, the practices of a scheming rascal that enjoys
+his power of playing upon your nerves, and loves to exert it--a sneaking
+vagabond that owes you a grudge, and pays it off this way, not daring to
+try a more manly one."
+
+"A grudge, indeed, he owes me--you say rightly," said Barton, with a
+sudden shudder; "a grudge as you call it. Oh, my God! when the justice
+of Heaven permits the Evil one to carry out a scheme of vengeance--when
+its execution is committed to the lost and terrible victim of sin, who
+owes his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is commissioned to
+pursue--then, indeed, the torments and terrors of hell are anticipated
+on earth. But heaven has dealt mercifully with me--hope has opened to me
+at last; and if death could come without the dreadful sight I am doomed
+to see, I would gladly close my eyes this moment upon the world. But
+though death is welcome, I shrink with an agony you cannot
+understand--an actual frenzy of terror--from the last encounter with
+that--that demon, who has drawn me thus to the verge of the chasm, and
+who is himself to plunge me down. I am to see him again--once more--but
+under circumstances unutterably more terrific than ever."
+
+As Barton thus spoke, he trembled so violently that Montague was really
+alarmed at the extremity of his sudden agitation, and hastened to lead
+him back to the topic which had before seemed to exert so tranquillizing
+an effect upon his mind.
+
+"It was not a dream," he said, after a time; "I was in a different
+state--I felt differently and strangely; and yet it was all as real, as
+clear, and vivid, as what I now see and hear--it was a reality."
+
+"And what _did_ you see and hear?" urged his companion.
+
+"When I wakened from the swoon I fell into on seeing _him_," said
+Barton, continuing as if he had not heard the question, "it was slowly,
+very slowly--I was lying by the margin of a broad lake, with misty hills
+all round, and a soft, melancholy, rose-coloured light illuminated it
+all. It was unusually sad and lonely, and yet more beautiful than any
+earthly scene. My head was leaning on the lap of a girl, and she was
+singing a song, that told, I know not how--whether by words or
+harmonies--of all my life--all that is past, and all that is still to
+come; and with the song the old feelings that I thought had perished
+within me came back, and tears flowed from my eyes--partly for the song
+and its mysterious beauty, and partly for the unearthly sweetness of
+her voice; and yet I knew the voice--oh! how well; and I was spell-bound
+as I listened and looked at the solitary scene, without stirring, almost
+without breathing--and, alas! alas! without turning my eyes toward the
+face that I knew was near me, so sweetly powerful was the enchantment
+that held me. And so, slowly, the song and scene grew fainter, and
+fainter, to my senses, till all was dark and still again. And then I
+awoke to this world, as you saw, comforted, for I knew that I was
+forgiven much." Barton wept again long and bitterly.
+
+From this time, as we have said, the prevailing tone of his mind was one
+of profound and tranquil melancholy. This, however, was not without its
+interruptions. He was thoroughly impressed with the conviction that he
+was to experience another and a final visitation, transcending in horror
+all he had before experienced. From this anticipated and unknown agony,
+he often shrank in such paroxysms of abject terror and distraction, as
+filled the whole household with dismay and superstitious panic. Even
+those among them who affected to discredit the theory of preternatural
+agency, were often in their secret souls visited during the silence of
+night with qualms and apprehensions, which they would not have readily
+confessed; and none of them attempted to dissuade Barton from the
+resolution on which he now systematically acted, of shutting himself up
+in his own apartment. The window-blinds of this room were kept jealously
+down; and his own man was seldom out of his presence, day or night, his
+bed being placed in the same chamber.
+
+This man was an attached and respectable servant; and his duties, in
+addition to those ordinarily imposed upon valets, but which Barton's
+independent habits generally dispensed with, were to attend carefully to
+the simple precautions by means of which his master hoped to exclude the
+dreaded intrusion of the "Watcher." And, in addition to attending to
+those arrangements, which amounted merely to guarding against the
+possibility of his master's being, through any unscreened window or open
+door, exposed to the dreaded influence, the valet was never to suffer
+him to be alone--total solitude, even for a minute, had become to him
+now almost as intolerable as the idea of going abroad into the public
+ways--it was an instinctive anticipation of what was coming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REQUIESCAT.
+
+
+It is needless to say, that under these circumstances, no steps were
+taken toward the fulfilment of that engagement into which he had
+entered. There was quite disparity enough in point of years, and indeed
+of habits, between the young lady and Captain Barton, to have precluded
+anything like very vehement or romantic attachment on her part. Though
+grieved and anxious, therefore, she was very far from being
+heart-broken.
+
+Miss Montague, however, devoted much of her time to the patient but
+fruitless attempt to cheer the unhappy invalid. She read for him, and
+conversed with him; but it was apparent that whatever exertions he made,
+the endeavour to escape from the one ever waking fear that preyed upon
+him, was utterly and miserably unavailing.
+
+Young ladies are much given to the cultivation of pets; and among those
+who shared the favour of Miss Montague was a fine old owl, which the
+gardener, who caught him napping among the ivy of a ruined stable, had
+dutifully presented to that young lady.
+
+The caprice which regulates such preferences was manifested in the
+extravagant favour with which this grim and ill-favoured bird was at
+once distinguished by his mistress; and, trifling as this whimsical
+circumstance may seem, I am forced to mention it, inasmuch as it is
+connected, oddly enough, with the concluding scene of the story.
+
+Barton, so far from sharing in this liking for the new favourite,
+regarded it from the first with an antipathy as violent as it was
+utterly unaccountable. Its very vicinity was unsupportable to him. He
+seemed to hate and dread it with a vehemence absolutely laughable, and
+which to those who have never witnessed the exhibition of antipathies of
+this kind, would seem all but incredible.
+
+With these few words of preliminary explanation, I shall proceed to
+state the particulars of the last scene in this strange series of
+incidents. It was almost two o'clock one winter's night, and Barton was,
+as usual at that hour, in his bed; the servant we have mentioned
+occupied a smaller bed in the same room, and a light was burning. The
+man was on a sudden aroused by his master, who said--
+
+"I can't get it out of my head that that accursed bird has got out
+somehow, and is lurking in some corner of the room. I have been dreaming
+about him. Get up, Smith, and look about; search for him. Such hateful
+dreams!"
+
+The servant rose, and examined the chamber, and while engaged in so
+doing, he heard the well-known sound, more like a long-drawn gasp than a
+hiss, with which these birds from their secret haunts affright the quiet
+of the night.
+
+This ghostly indication of its proximity--for the sound proceeded from
+the passage upon which Barton's chamber-door opened--determined the
+search of the servant, who, opening the door, proceeded a step or two
+forward for the purpose of driving the bird away. He had however, hardly
+entered the lobby, when the door behind him slowly swung to under the
+impulse, as it seemed, of some gentle current of air; but as
+immediately over the door there was a kind of window, intended in the
+day time to aid in lighting the passage, and through which at present
+the rays of the candle were issuing, the valet could see quite enough
+for his purpose.
+
+As he advanced he heard his master--who, lying in a well-curtained bed,
+had not, as it seemed, perceived his exit from the room--call him by
+name, and direct him to place the candle on the table by his bed. The
+servant, who was now some way in the long passage, and not liking to
+raise his voice for the purpose of replying, lest he should startle the
+sleeping inmates of the house, began to walk hurriedly and softly back
+again, when, to his amazement, he heard a voice in the interior of the
+chamber answering calmly, and actually saw, through the window which
+over-topped the door, that the light was slowly shifting, as if carried
+across the room in answer to his master's call. Palsied by a feeling
+akin to terror, yet not unmingled with curiosity, he stood breathless
+and listening at the threshold, unable to summon resolution to push open
+the door and enter. Then came a rustling of the curtains, and a sound
+like that of one who in a low voice hushes a child to rest, in the midst
+of which he heard Barton say, in a tone of stifled horror--"Oh, God--oh,
+my God!" and repeat the same exclamation several times. Then ensued a
+silence, which again was broken by the same strange soothing sound; and
+at last there burst forth, in one swelling peal, a yell of agony so
+appalling and hideous, that, under some impulse of ungovernable horror,
+the man rushed to the door, and with his whole strength strove to force
+it open. Whether it was that, in his agitation, he had himself but
+imperfectly turned the handle, or that the door was really secured upon
+the inside, he failed to effect an entrance; and as he tugged and
+pushed, yell after yell rang louder and wilder through the chamber,
+accompanied all the while by the same hushed sounds. Actually freezing
+with terror, and scarce knowing what he did, the man turned and ran down
+the passage, wringing his hands in the extremity of horror and
+irresolution. At the stair-head he was encountered by General Montague,
+scared and eager, and just as they met the fearful sounds had ceased.
+
+"What is it? Who--where is your master?" said Montague with the
+incoherence of extreme agitation. "Has anything--for God's sake is
+anything wrong?"
+
+"Lord have mercy on us, it's all over," said the man staring wildly
+towards his master's chamber. "He's dead, sir, I'm sure he's dead."
+
+Without waiting for inquiry or explanation, Montague, closely followed
+by the servant, hurried to the chamber-door, turned the handle, and
+pushed it open. As the door yielded to his pressure, the ill-omened bird
+of which the servant had been in search, uttering its spectral warning,
+started suddenly from the far side of the bed, and flying through the
+doorway close over their heads, and extinguishing, in his passage, the
+candle which Montague carried, crashed through the skylight that
+overlooked the lobby, and sailed away into the darkness of the outer
+space.
+
+"There it is, God bless us," whispered the man, after a breathless
+pause.
+
+"Curse that bird," muttered the General, startled by the suddenness of
+the apparition, and unable to conceal his discomposure.
+
+"The candle is moved," said the man, after another breathless pause,
+pointing to the candle that still burned in the room; "see, they put it
+by the bed."
+
+"Draw the curtains, fellow, and don't stand gaping there," whispered
+Montague, sternly.
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"Hold this, then," said Montague, impatiently thrusting the candlestick
+into the servant's hand, and himself advancing to the bed-side, he drew
+the curtains apart. The light of the candle, which was still burning at
+the bedside, fell upon a figure huddled together, and half upright, at
+the head of the bed. It seemed as though it had slunk back as far as the
+solid panelling would allow, and the hands were still clutched in the
+bed-clothes.
+
+"Barton, Barton, _Barton_!" cried the General, with a strange mixture of
+awe and vehemence. He took the candle, and held it so that it shone full
+upon the face. The features were fixed, stern, and white; the jaw was
+fallen; and the sightless eyes, still open, gazed vacantly forward
+toward the front of the bed. "God Almighty! he's dead," muttered the
+General, as he looked upon this fearful spectacle. They both continued
+to gaze upon it in silence for a minute or more. "And cold, too,"
+whispered Montague, withdrawing his hand from that of the dead man.
+
+"And see, see--may I never have life, sir," added the man, after a
+another pause, with a shudder, "but there was something else on the bed
+with him. Look there--look there--see that, sir."
+
+As the man thus spoke, he pointed to a deep indenture, as if caused by a
+heavy pressure, near the foot of the bed.
+
+Montague was silent.
+
+"Come, sir, come away, for God's sake," whispered the man, drawing close
+up to him, and holding fast by his arm, while he glanced fearfully
+round; "what good can be done here now--come away, for God's sake!"
+
+At this moment they heard the steps of more than one approaching, and
+Montague, hastily desiring the servant to arrest their progress,
+endeavoured to loose the rigid gripe with which the fingers of the dead
+man were clutched in the bed-clothes, and drew, as well as he was able,
+the awful figure into a reclining posture; then closing the curtains
+carefully upon it, he hastened himself to meet those persons that were
+approaching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is needless to follow the personages so slightly connected with this
+narrative, into the events of their after life; it is enough to say,
+that no clue to the solution of these mysterious occurrences was ever
+after discovered; and so long an interval having now passed since the
+event which I have just described concluded this strange history, it is
+scarcely to be expected that time can throw any new lights upon its dark
+and inexplicable outline. Until the secrets of the earth shall be no
+longer hidden, therefore, these transactions must remain shrouded in
+their original obscurity.
+
+The only occurrence in Captain Barton's former life to which reference
+was ever made, as having any possible connexion with the sufferings with
+which his existence closed, and which he himself seemed to regard as
+working out a retribution for some grievous sin of his past life, was a
+circumstance which not for several years after his death was brought to
+light. The nature of this disclosure was painful to his relatives, and
+discreditable to his memory.
+
+It appeared that some six years before Captain Barton's final return to
+Dublin, he had formed, in the town of Plymouth, a guilty attachment, the
+object of which was the daughter of one of the ship's crew under his
+command. The father had visited the frailty of his unhappy child with
+extreme harshness, and even brutality, and it was said that she had
+died heart-broken. Presuming upon Barton's implication in her guilt,
+this man had conducted himself toward him with marked insolence, and
+Barton retaliated this, and what he resented with still more exasperated
+bitterness--his treatment of the unfortunate girl--by a systematic
+exercise of those terrible and arbitrary severities which the
+regulations of the navy placed at the command of those who are
+responsible for its discipline. The man had at length made his escape,
+while the vessel was in port at Naples, but died, as it was said, in an
+hospital in that town, of the wounds inflicted in one of his recent and
+sanguinary punishments.
+
+Whether these circumstances in reality bear, or not, upon the
+occurrences of Barton's after-life, it is, of course, impossible to say.
+It seems, however more than probable that they were at least, in his own
+mind, closely associated with them. But however the truth may be, as to
+the origin and motives of this mysterious persecution, there can be no
+doubt that, with respect to the agencies by which it was accomplished,
+absolute and impenetrable mystery is like to prevail until the day of
+doom.
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR.
+
+The preceding narrative is given in the _ipsissima verba_ of the good
+old clergyman, under whose hand it was delivered to Doctor Hesselius.
+Notwithstanding the occasional stiffness and redundancy of his
+sentences, I thought it better to reserve to myself the power of
+assuring the reader, that in handing to the printer, the M.S. of a
+statement so marvellous, the Editor has not altered one letter of the
+original text.--[_Ed. Papers of Dr. Hesselius._]
+
+
+
+
+MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+On this case, Doctor Hesselius has inscribed nothing more than the
+words, "Harman's Report," and a simple reference to his own
+extraordinary Essay on "the Interior Sense, and the Conditions of the
+opening thereof."
+
+The reference is to Vol. I. Section 317, Note Z'a. The note to which
+reference is thus made, simply says: "There are two accounts of the
+remarkable case of the Honourable Mr. Justice Harbottle, one furnished
+to me by Mrs. Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells (June, 1805); the other at a
+much later date, by Anthony Harman, Esq. I much prefer the former; in
+the first place, because it is minute and detailed, and written, it
+seems to me, with more caution and knowledge; and in the next, because
+the letters from Doctor Hedstone, which are embodied in it, furnish
+matter of the highest value to a right apprehension of the nature of the
+case. It was one of the best declared cases of an opening of the
+interior sense, which I have met with. It was affected, too, by the
+phenomenon, which occurs so frequently as to indicate a law of these
+eccentric conditions; that is to say, it exhibited, what I may term, the
+contagious character of this sort of intrusion of the spirit-world upon
+the proper domain of matter. So soon as the spirit-action has
+established itself in the case of one patient, its developed energy
+begins to radiate, more or less effectually, upon others. The interior
+vision of the child was opened; as was, also, that of its mother, Mrs.
+Pyneweck; and both the interior vision and hearing of the scullery-maid,
+were opened on the same occasion. After-appearances are the result of
+the law explained in Vol. II. Section 17 to 49. The common centre of
+association, simultaneously recalled, unites, or _re_unites, as the case
+may be, for a period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The _maximum_
+will extend to days, the _minimum_ is little more than a second. We see
+the operation of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of
+lunacy, of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and
+painful character, though unattended by incapacity of business."
+
+The memorandum of the case of Judge Harbottle, which was written by Mrs.
+Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells, which Doctor Hesselius thought the better of
+the two, I have been unable to discover among his papers. I found in
+his escritoire a note to the effect that he had lent the Report of Judge
+Harbottle's case, written by Mrs. Trimmer to Doctor F. Heyne. To that
+learned and able gentleman accordingly I wrote, and received from him,
+in his reply, which was full of alarms and regrets on account of the
+uncertain safety of that "valuable MS.," a line written long since by
+Doctor Hesselius, which completely exonerated him, inasmuch as it
+acknowledged the safe return of the papers. The Narrative of Mr. Harman,
+is, therefore, the only one available for this collection. The late Dr.
+Hesselius, in another passage of the note that I have cited, says, "As
+to the facts (non-medical) of the case, the narrative of Mr. Harman
+exactly tallies with that furnished by Mrs. Trimmer." The strictly
+scientific view of the case would scarcely interest the popular reader;
+and, possibly, for the purposes of this selection, I should, even had I
+both papers to choose between, have preferred that of Mr. Harman, which
+is given, in full, in the following pages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE JUDGE'S HOUSE.
+
+
+Thirty years ago, an elderly man, to whom I paid quarterly a small
+annuity charged on some property of mine, came on the quarter-day to
+receive it. He was a dry, sad, quiet man, who had known better days, and
+had always maintained an unexceptionable character. No better authority
+could be imagined for a ghost story.
+
+He told me one, though with a manifest reluctance; he was drawn into the
+narration by his choosing to explain what I should not have remarked,
+that he had called two days earlier than that week after the strict day
+of payment, which he had usually allowed to elapse. His reason was a
+sudden determination to change his lodgings, and the consequent
+necessity of paying his rent a little before it was due.
+
+He lodged in a dark street in Westminster, in a spacious old house, very
+warm, being wainscoted from top to bottom, and furnished with no undue
+abundance of windows, and those fitted with thick sashes and small
+panes.
+
+This house was, as the bills upon the windows testified, offered to be
+sold or let. But no one seemed to care to look at it.
+
+A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large, steady,
+alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to read what you might
+have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed,
+was in charge of it, with a solitary 'maid-of-all-work' under her
+command. My poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of
+their extraordinary cheapness. He had occupied them for nearly a year
+without the slightest disturbance, and was the only tenant, under rent,
+in the house. He had two rooms; a sitting-room, and a bedroom with a
+closet opening from it, in which he kept his books and papers locked up.
+He had gone to his bed, having also locked the outer door. Unable to
+sleep, he had lighted a candle, and after having read for a time, had
+laid the book beside him. He heard the old clock at the stair-head
+strike one; and very shortly after, to his alarm, he saw the
+closet-door, which he thought he had locked, open stealthily, and a
+slight dark man, particularly sinister, and somewhere about fifty,
+dressed in mourning of a very antique fashion, such a suit as we see in
+Hogarth, entered the room on tip-toe. He was followed by an elder man,
+stout, and blotched with scurvy, and whose features, fixed as a
+corpse's, were stamped with dreadful force with a character of
+sensuality and villany.
+
+This old man wore a flowered-silk dressing-gown and ruffles, and he
+remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet,
+such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress.
+
+This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand a coil of
+rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the
+foot of his bed, from the closet-door at the farther end of the room, at
+the left, near the window, to the door opening upon the lobby, close to
+the bed's head, at his right.
+
+He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so
+near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again,
+no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to
+enter it again alone, even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of
+the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning
+fast locked, as he had left them before going to bed.
+
+In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared the least
+conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but walked as
+living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration on the
+floor as they crossed it. He so obviously suffered from speaking about
+the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions.
+
+There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very
+singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much
+my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information
+which I knew he could give me. He had himself more than once pointed out
+that old house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the
+strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater detail.
+
+His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey its substance.
+
+Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars about the
+closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle, one of the judges of
+the Court of Common Pleas. You refer, of course, to the extraordinary
+occurrences that made that period of his life long after a theme for
+'winter tales' and metaphysical speculation. I happen to know perhaps
+more than any other man living of those mysterious particulars.
+
+The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more than thirty years
+ago, I examined for the last time. During the years that have passed
+since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions,
+has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it
+stood. If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I
+should have no difficulty about naming the street in which it stood. As
+what I have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting
+value, and as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being
+silent on that particular point.
+
+How old the house was, I can't tell. People said it was built by Roger
+Harbottle, a Turkey merchant, in the reign of King James I. I am not a
+good opinion upon such questions; but having been in it, though in its
+forlorn and deserted state. I can tell you in a general way what it was
+like. It was built of dark-red brick, and the door and windows were
+faced with stone that had turned yellow by time. It receded some feet
+from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a florid and
+fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent to
+the hall-door, in which were fixed, under a file of lamps, among scrolls
+and twisted leaves, two immense 'extinguishers,' like the conical caps
+of fairies, into which, in old times, the footmen used to thrust their
+flambeaux when their chairs or coaches had set down their great people,
+in the hall or at the steps, as the case might be. That hall is panelled
+up to the ceiling, and has a large fire-place. Two or three stately old
+rooms open from it at each side. The windows of these are tall, with
+many small panes. Passing through the arch at the back of the hall, you
+come upon the wide and heavy well-staircase. There is a back staircase
+also. The mansion is large, and has not as much light, by any means, in
+proportion to its extent, as modern houses enjoy. When I saw it, it had
+long been untenanted, and had the gloomy reputation beside of a haunted
+house. Cobwebs floated from the ceilings or spanned the corners of the
+cornices, and dust lay thick over everything. The windows were stained
+with the dust and rain of fifty years, and darkness had thus grown
+darker.
+
+When I made it my first visit, it was in company with my father, when I
+was still a boy, in the year 1808. I was about twelve years old, and my
+imagination impressible, as it always is at that age. I looked about me
+with great awe. I was here in the very centre and scene of those
+occurrences which I had heard recounted at the fire-side at home, with
+so delightful a horror.
+
+My father was an old bachelor of nearly sixty when he married. He had,
+when a child, seen Judge Harbottle on the bench in his robes and wig a
+dozen times at least before his death, which took place in 1748, and his
+appearance made a powerful and unpleasant impression, not only on his
+imagination, but upon his nerves.
+
+The Judge was at that time a man of some sixty-seven years. He had a
+great mulberry-coloured face, a big, carbuncled nose, fierce eyes, and a
+grim and brutal mouth. My father, who was young at the time, thought it
+the most formidable face he had ever seen; for there were evidences of
+intellectual power in the formation and lines of the forehead. His voice
+was loud and harsh, and gave effect to the sarcasm which was his
+habitual weapon on the bench.
+
+This old gentleman had the reputation of being about the wickedest man
+in England. Even on the bench he now and then showed his scorn of
+opinion. He had carried cases his own way, it was said, in spite of
+counsel, authorities, and even of juries, by a sort of cajolery,
+violence, and bamboozling, that somehow confused and overpowered
+resistance. He had never actually committed himself; he was too cunning
+to do that. He had the character of being, however, a dangerous and
+unscrupulous judge; but his character did not trouble him. The
+associates he chose for his hours of relaxation cared as little as he
+did about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MR. PETERS.
+
+
+One night during the session of 1746 this old Judge went down in his
+chair to wait in one of the rooms of the House of Lords for the result
+of a division in which he and his order were interested.
+
+This over, he was about to return to his house close by, in his chair;
+but the night had become so soft and fine that he changed his mind, sent
+it home empty, and with two footmen, each with a flambeau, set out on
+foot in preference. Gout had made him rather a slow pedestrian. It took
+him some time to get through the two or three streets he had to pass
+before reaching his house.
+
+In one of those narrow streets of tall houses, perfectly silent at that
+hour, he overtook, slowly as he was walking, a very singular-looking old
+gentleman.
+
+He had a bottle-green coat on, with a cape to it, and large stone
+buttons, a broad-leafed low-crowned hat, from under which a big powdered
+wig escaped; he stooped very much, and supported his bending knees with
+the aid of a crutch-handled cane, and so shuffled and tottered along
+painfully.
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," said this old man in a very quavering voice,
+as the burly Judge came up with him, and he extended his hand feebly
+towards his arm.
+
+Mr. Justice Harbottle saw that the man was by no means poorly dressed,
+and his manner that of a gentleman.
+
+The Judge stopped short, and said, in his harsh peremptory tones, "Well,
+sir, how can I serve you?"
+
+"Can you direct me to Judge Harbottle's house? I have some intelligence
+of the very last importance to communicate to him."
+
+"Can you tell it before witnesses?" asked the Judge.
+
+"By no means; it must reach _his_ ear only," quavered the old man
+earnestly.
+
+"If that be so, sir, you have only to accompany me a few steps farther
+to reach my house, and obtain a private audience; for I am Judge
+Harbottle."
+
+With this invitation the infirm gentleman in the white wig complied very
+readily; and in another minute the stranger stood in what was then
+termed the front parlour of the Judge's house, _tete-a-tete_ with that
+shrewd and dangerous functionary.
+
+He had to sit down, being very much exhausted, and unable for a little
+time to speak; and then he had a fit of coughing, and after that a fit
+of gasping; and thus two or three minutes passed, during which the Judge
+dropped his roquelaure on an arm-chair, and threw his cocked-hat over
+that.
+
+The venerable pedestrian in the white wig quickly recovered his voice.
+With closed doors they remained together for some time.
+
+There were guests waiting in the drawing-rooms, and the sound of men's
+voices laughing, and then of a female voice singing to a harpsichord,
+were heard distinctly in the hall over the stairs; for old Judge
+Harbottle had arranged one of his dubious jollifications, such as might
+well make the hair of godly men's heads stand upright, for that night.
+
+This old gentleman in the powdered white wig, that rested on his stooped
+shoulders, must have had something to say that interested the Judge very
+much; for he would not have parted on easy terms with the ten minutes
+and upwards which that conference filched from the sort of revelry in
+which he most delighted, and in which he was the roaring king, and in
+some sort the tyrant also, of his company.
+
+The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judge's
+mulberry-coloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy
+yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner,
+as he bid the stranger good-night. The servant saw that the conversation
+had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened.
+
+Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his
+profane company, and his great china bowl of punch--the identical bowl
+from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this
+Judge's grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and
+hung with scrolls of lemon-peel--instead, I say, of stumping and
+clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean
+enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the
+window-pane, watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung
+stiffly to the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement.
+
+The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall
+bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels
+under excitement sometimes indulge in now-a-days, with a stamp or two of
+his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. He commanded
+the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him
+his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again
+without having ascertained where he lodged, and who he was, and all
+about him.
+
+"By ----, sirrah! if you fail me in this, you doff my livery to-night!"
+
+Forth bounced the stalwart footman, with his heavy cane under his arm,
+and skipped down the steps, and looked up and down the street after the
+singular figure, so easy to recognise.
+
+What were his adventures I shall not tell you just now.
+
+The old man, in the conference to which he had been admitted in that
+stately panelled room, had just told the Judge a very strange story. He
+might be himself a conspirator; he might possibly be crazed; or possibly
+his whole story was straight and true.
+
+The aged gentleman in the bottle-green coat, on finding himself alone
+with Mr. Justice Harbottle, had become agitated. He said,
+
+"There is, perhaps you are not aware, my lord, a prisoner in Shrewsbury
+jail, charged with having forged a bill of exchange for a hundred and
+twenty pounds, and his name is Lewis Pyneweck, a grocer of that town."
+
+"Is there?" says the Judge, who knew well that there was.
+
+"Yes, my lord," says the old man.
+
+"Then you had better say nothing to affect this case. If you do, by ----
+I'll commit you; for I'm to try it," says the Judge, with his terrible
+look and tone.
+
+"I am not going to do anything of the kind, my lord; of him or his case
+I know nothing, and care nothing. But a fact has come to my knowledge
+which it behoves you to well consider."
+
+"And what may that fact be?" inquired the Judge; "I'm in haste, sir, and
+beg you will use dispatch."
+
+"It has come to my knowledge, my lord, that a secret tribunal is in
+process of formation, the object of which is to take cognisance of the
+conduct of the judges; and first, of _your_ conduct, my lord: it is a
+wicked conspiracy."
+
+"Who are of it?" demands the Judge.
+
+"I know not a single name as yet. I know but the fact, my lord; it is
+most certainly true."
+
+"I'll have you before the Privy Council, sir," says the Judge.
+
+"That is what I most desire; but not for a day or two, my lord."
+
+"And why so?"
+
+"I have not as yet a single name, as I told your lordship; but I expect
+to have a list of the most forward men in it, and some other papers
+connected with the plot, in two or three days."
+
+"You said one or two just now."
+
+"About that time, my lord."
+
+"Is this a Jacobite plot?"
+
+"In the main I think it is, my lord."
+
+"Why, then, it is political. I have tried no State prisoners, nor am
+like to try any such. How, then, doth it concern me?"
+
+"From what I can gather, my lord, there are those in it who desire
+private revenges upon certain judges."
+
+"What do they call their cabal?"
+
+"The High Court of Appeal, my lord."
+
+"Who are you sir? What is your name?"
+
+"Hugh Peters, my lord."
+
+"That should be a Whig name?"
+
+"It is, my lord."
+
+"Where do you lodge, Mr. Peters?"
+
+"In Thames-street, my lord, over against the sign of the Three Kings."
+
+"Three Kings? Take care one be not too many for you, Mr. Peters! How
+come you, an honest Whig, as you say, to be privy to a Jacobite plot?
+Answer me that."
+
+"My lord, a person in whom I take an interest has been seduced to take a
+part in it; and being frightened at the unexpected wickedness of their
+plans, he is resolved to become an informer for the Crown."
+
+"He resolves like a wise man, sir. What does he say of the persons? Who
+are in the plot? Doth he know them?"
+
+"Only two, my lord; but he will be introduced to the club in a few days,
+and he will then have a list, and more exact information of their plans,
+and above all of their oaths, and their hours and places of meeting,
+with which he wishes to be acquainted before they can have any
+suspicions of his intentions. And being so informed, to whom, think you,
+my lord, had he best go then?"
+
+"To the king's attorney-general straight. But you say this concerns me,
+sir, in particular? How about this prisoner, Lewis Pyneweck? Is he one
+of them?"
+
+"I can't tell, my lord; but for some reason, it is thought your lordship
+will be well advised if you try him not. For if you do, it is feared
+'twill shorten your days."
+
+"So far as I can learn, Mr. Peters, this business smells pretty strong
+of blood and treason. The king's attorney-general will know how to deal
+with it. When shall I see you again, sir?"
+
+"If you give me leave, my lord, either before your lordship's court
+sits, or after it rises, to-morrow. I should like to come and tell your
+lordship what has passed."
+
+"Do so, Mr. Peters, at nine o'clock to-morrow morning. And see you play
+me no trick, sir, in this matter; if you do, by ----, sir, I'll lay you
+by the heels!"
+
+"You need fear no trick from me, my lord; had I not wished to serve you,
+and acquit my own conscience, I never would have come all this way to
+talk with your lordship."
+
+"I'm willing to believe you, Mr. Peters; I'm willing to believe you,
+sir."
+
+And upon this they parted.
+
+"He has either painted his face, or he is consumedly sick," thought the
+old Judge.
+
+The light had shone more effectually upon his features as he turned to
+leave the room with a low bow, and they looked, he fancied, unnaturally
+chalky.
+
+"D--- him!" said the judge ungraciously, as he began to scale the
+stairs: "he has half-spoiled my supper."
+
+But if he had, no one but the Judge himself perceived it, and the
+evidence was all, as any one might perceive, the other way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LEWIS PYNEWECK.
+
+
+In the meantime, the footman dispatched in pursuit of Mr. Peters
+speedily overtook that feeble gentleman. The old man stopped when he
+heard the sound of pursuing steps, but any alarms that may have crossed
+his mind seemed to disappear on his recognising the livery. He very
+gratefully accepted the proferred assistance, and placed his tremulous
+arm within the servant's for support. They had not gone far, however,
+when the old man stopped suddenly, saying,
+
+"Dear me! as I live, I have dropped it. You heard it fall. My eyes, I
+fear, won't serve me, and I'm unable to stoop low enough; but if you
+will look, you shall have half the find. It is a guinea; I carried it in
+my glove."
+
+The street was silent and deserted. The footman had hardly descended to
+what he termed his "hunkers," and begun to search the pavement about the
+spot which the old man indicated, when Mr. Peters, who seemed very much
+exhausted, and breathed with difficulty, struck him a violent blow, from
+above, over the back of the head with a heavy instrument, and then
+another; and leaving him bleeding and senseless in the gutter, ran like
+a lamp-lighter down a lane to the right, and was gone.
+
+When, an hour later, the watchman brought the man in livery home, still
+stupid and covered with blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant
+roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for
+taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective
+of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the cart's
+tail, and the hangman's lash.
+
+Notwithstanding this demonstration, the Judge was pleased. It was a
+disguised "affidavit man," or footpad, no doubt, who had been employed
+to frighten him. The trick had fallen through.
+
+A "court of appeal," such as the false Hugh Peters had indicated, with
+assassination for its sanction, would be an uncomfortable institution
+for a "hanging judge" like the Honourable Justice Harbottle. That
+sarcastic and ferocious administrator of the criminal code of England,
+at that time a rather pharisaical, bloody, and heinous system of
+justice, had reasons of his own for choosing to try that very Lewis
+Pyneweck, on whose behalf this audacious trick was devised. Try him he
+would. No man living should take that morsel out of his mouth.
+
+Of Lewis Pyneweck of course, so far as the outer world could see, he
+knew nothing. He would try him after his fashion, without fear, favour,
+or affection.
+
+But did he not remember a certain thin man, dressed in mourning, in
+whose house, in Shrewsbury, the Judge's lodgings used to be, until a
+scandal of his ill-treating his wife came suddenly to light? A grocer
+with a demure look, a soft step, and a lean face as dark as mahogany,
+with a nose sharp and long, standing ever so little awry, and a pair of
+dark steady brown eyes under thinly-traced black brows--a man whose thin
+lips wore always a faint unpleasant smile.
+
+Had not that scoundrel an account to settle with the Judge? had he not
+been troublesome lately? and was not his name Lewis Pyneweck, some time
+grocer in Shrewsbury, and now prisoner in the jail of that town?
+
+The reader may take it, if he pleases, as a sign that Judge Harbottle
+was a good Christian, that he suffered nothing ever from remorse. That
+was undoubtedly true. He had nevertheless done this grocer, forger, what
+you will, some five or six years before, a grievous wrong; but it was
+not that, but a possible scandal, and possible complications, that
+troubled the learned Judge now.
+
+Did he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the
+dock, the chances must be at least ninety-nine out of a hundred that he
+is guilty.
+
+A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep
+the high-roads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the
+man to make the evil-disposed quiver, and to refresh the world with
+showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of
+the ancient saw he loved to quote:
+
+     Foolish pity
+     Ruins a city.
+
+In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man
+accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read "villain"
+written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try
+him, and no one else should.
+
+A saucy-looking woman, still handsome, in a mob-cap gay with blue
+ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too
+fine for the Judge's housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped
+into his study next morning, and, seeing the Judge alone, stepped in.
+
+"Here's another letter from him, come by the post this morning. Can't
+you do nothing for him?" she said wheedlingly, with her arm over his
+neck, and her delicate finger and thumb fiddling with the lobe of his
+purple ear.
+
+"I'll try," said Judge Harbottle, not raising his eyes from the paper he
+was reading.
+
+"I knew you'd do what I asked you," she said.
+
+The Judge clapt his gouty claw over his heart, and made her an ironical
+bow.
+
+"What," she asked, "will you do?"
+
+"Hang him," said the Judge with a chuckle.
+
+"You don't mean to; no, you don't, my little man," said she, surveying
+herself in a mirror on the wall.
+
+"I'm d----d but I think you're falling in love with your husband at
+last!" said Judge Harbottle.
+
+"I'm blest but I think you're growing jealous of him," replied the lady
+with a laugh. "But no; he was always a bad one to me; I've done with him
+long ago."
+
+"And he with you, by George! When he took your fortune and your spoons
+and your ear-rings, he had all he wanted of you. He drove you from his
+house; and when he discovered you had made yourself comfortable, and
+found a good situation, he'd have taken your guineas and your silver and
+your ear-rings over again, and then allowed you half-a-dozen years more
+to make a new harvest for his mill. You don't wish him good; if you say
+you do, you lie."
+
+She laughed a wicked saucy laugh, and gave the terrible Rhadamanthus a
+playful tap on the chops.
+
+"He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor," she said, while her
+eyes wandered over the pictures on the wall, and back again to the
+looking-glass; and certainly she did not look as if his jeopardy
+troubled her very much.
+
+"Confound his impudence, the _scoundrel_!" thundered the old Judge,
+throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to do _in furore_ on the
+bench, and the lines of his mouth looked brutal, and his eyes ready to
+leap from their sockets. "If you answer his letter from my house to
+please yourself, you'll write your next from somebody else's to please
+me. You understand, my pretty witch, I'll not be pestered. Come, no
+pouting; whimpering won't do. You don't care a brass farthing for the
+villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of
+Mother Carey's chickens; and where you come, the storm is up. Get you
+gone, baggage! get you _gone_!" he repeated with a stamp; for a knock at
+the hall-door made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable.
+
+I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again.
+The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he
+laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the
+very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark
+front parlour was often in his memory.
+
+His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints and such
+disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the features of this
+false old man, who had turned out too hard for his tall footman, were
+identical with those of Lewis Pyneweck.
+
+Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown solicitor, and
+tell him that there was a man in town who bore a wonderful resemblance
+to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make
+inquiry through the post forthwith whether any one was personating
+Pyneweck in prison, and whether he had thus or otherwise made his
+escape.
+
+The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his identity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+INTERRUPTION IN COURT.
+
+
+In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time the judges
+were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those days, and newspapers,
+like the wagons and stage-coaches, took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck,
+in the Judge's house, with a diminished household--the greater part of
+the Judge's servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding
+circuit, and travelled in his coach in state--kept house rather
+solitarily at home.
+
+In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuries--some of them,
+inflicted by herself, enormous--in spite of a married life of spited
+bickerings--a life in which there seemed no love or liking or
+forbearance, for years--now that Pyneweck stood in near danger of death,
+something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in
+Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate.
+She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even a
+fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so
+powerfully.
+
+She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take place. She
+could not get it out of her head for a minute; she felt faint as it drew
+towards evening.
+
+Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial must be over
+by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news
+was long delayed. She wished the floods would last for ever. It was
+dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and
+that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided; dreadful to
+know that they must subside and the news come at last.
+
+She had some vague trust in the Judge's good-nature, and much in the
+resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he
+wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled
+support.
+
+At last the news did come--a long arrear all in a gush: a letter from a
+female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the
+Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with
+great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the
+Shrewsbury Assizes in the _Morning Advertiser_. Like an impatient reader
+of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the
+list of the executions.
+
+Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was
+this line:
+
+"Lewis Pyneweck--forgery."
+
+She had to read it half-a-dozen times over before she was sure she
+understood it. Here was the paragraph:
+
+     "_Sentence, Death_--7.
+
+     "Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:
+
+     "Thomas Primer, _alias_ Duck--highway robbery.
+
+     "Flora Guy--stealing to the value of 11_s._ _6d._
+
+     "Arthur Pounden--burglary.
+
+     "Matilda Mummery--riot.
+
+     "Lewis Pyneweck--forgery, bill of exchange."
+
+And when she reached this, she read it over and over, feeling very cold
+and sick. This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs.
+Carwell--Carwell being her maiden name, which she had resumed.
+
+No one in the house except its master knew her history. Her introduction
+had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted
+between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine.
+
+Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little girl,
+hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in
+her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what
+she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not
+able to speak. She held the child before her, and looked in the little
+girl's wondering face, and burst into tears of horror.
+
+She thought, the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he could. For a
+time she was furious with him; and hugged and kissed her bewildered
+little girl, who returned her gaze with large round eyes.
+
+That little girl had lost her father, and knew nothing of the matter.
+She had been always told that her father was dead long ago.
+
+A woman, coarse, uneducated, vain, and violent, does not reason, or even
+feel, very distinctly; but in these tears of consternation were mingling
+a self-upbraiding. She felt afraid of that little child.
+
+But Mrs. Carwell was a person who lived not upon sentiment, but upon
+beef and pudding; she consoled herself with punch; she did not trouble
+herself long even with resentments; she was a gross and material person,
+and could not mourn over the irrevocable for more than a limited number
+of hours, even if she would.
+
+Judge Harbottle was soon in London again. Except the gout, this savage
+old epicurean never knew a day's sickness. He laughed and coaxed and
+bullied away the young woman's faint upbraidings, and in a little time
+Lewis Pyneweck troubled her no more; and the Judge secretly chuckled
+over the perfectly fair removal of a bore, who might have grown little
+by little into something very like a tyrant.
+
+It was the lot of the Judge whose adventures I am now recounting to try
+criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after his return. He had
+commenced his charge to the jury in a case of forgery, and was, after
+his wont, thundering dead against the prisoner, with many a hard
+aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence,
+and, instead of looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at
+some person in the body of the court.
+
+Among the persons of small importance who stand and listen at the sides
+was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean
+figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just
+handed a letter to the crier, before he caught the Judge's eye.
+
+That Judge descried, to his amazement, the features of Lewis Pyneweck.
+He has the usual faint thin-lipped smile; and with his blue chin raised
+in air, and as it seemed quite unconscious of the distinguished notice
+he has attracted, he was stretching his low cravat with his crooked
+fingers, while he slowly turned his head from side to side--a process
+which enabled the Judge to see distinctly a stripe of swollen blue round
+his neck, which indicated, he thought, the grip of the rope.
+
+This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step, from which he
+could better see the court. He now stepped down, and the Judge lost
+sight of him.
+
+His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in
+which this man had vanished. He turned to the tipstaff. His first effort
+to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared his throat, and told the astounded
+official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court.
+
+"He's but this moment gone down _there_. Bring him in custody before me,
+within ten minutes' time, or I'll strip your gown from your shoulders
+and fine the sheriff!" he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the
+court in search of the functionary.
+
+Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which
+Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared
+notes. Not one had seen any one making a disturbance. They asked one
+another if the Judge was losing his head.
+
+Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his charge a great
+deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court
+with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence
+to see the prisoner hanged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CALEB SEARCHER.
+
+
+The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he
+would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read
+the direction:
+
+    _To the Honourable_
+          _The Lord Justice_
+              _Elijah Harbottle,_
+
+    _One of his Majesty's Justices of_
+      _the Honourable Court of Common Pleas._
+
+It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.
+
+When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his
+coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk
+dressing-gown; and then he found its contents to be a closely-written
+letter, in a clerk's hand, and an enclosure in 'secretary hand,' as I
+believe the angular scrivinary of law-writings in those days was termed,
+engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter
+said:
+
+
+          "Mr. Justice Harbottle,--My Lord,
+
+"I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in
+order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill
+hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for
+the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully
+executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the--the day of ----
+last, by reason of the wilful perversion of the evidence, and the undue
+pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of
+evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all
+which the promoter of the prosecution of the said indictment, before the
+High Court of Appeal, hath lost his life.
+
+"And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther ordered to acquaint
+your lordship is fixed for the 10th day of ---- next ensuing, by the
+right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice Twofold, of the court aforesaid,
+to wit, the High Court of Appeal, on which day it will most certainly
+take place. And I am farther to acquaint your lordship, to prevent any
+surprise or miscarriage, that your case stands first for the said day,
+and that the said High Court of Appeal sits day and night, and never
+rises; and herewith, by order of the said court, I furnish your lordship
+with a copy (extract) of the record in this case, except of the
+indictment, whereof, notwithstanding, the substance and effect is
+supplied to your lordship in this Notice. And farther I am to inform
+you, that in case the jury then to try your lordship should find you
+guilty, the right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice will, in passing
+sentence of death upon you, fix the day of execution for the 10th day of
+----, being one calendar month from the day of your trial."
+
+It was signed by "CALEB SEARCHER,
+
+     "Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the
+        "Kingdom of Life and Death."
+
+
+The Judge glanced through the parchment.
+
+"'Sblood! Do they think a man like me is to be bamboozled by their
+buffoonery?"
+
+The Judge's coarse features were wrung into one of his sneers; but he
+was pale. Possibly, after all, there was a conspiracy on foot. It was
+queer. Did they mean to pistol him in his carriage? or did they only
+aim at frightening him?
+
+Judge Harbottle had more than enough of animal courage. He was not
+afraid of highwaymen, and he had fought more than his share of duels,
+being a foul-mouthed advocate while he held briefs at the bar. No one
+questioned his fighting qualities. But with respect to this particular
+case of Pyneweck, he lived in a house of glass. Was there not his
+pretty, dark-eyed, over-dressed housekeeper, Mrs. Flora Carwell? Very
+easy for people who knew Shrewsbury to identify Mrs. Pyneweck, if once
+put upon the scent; and had he not stormed and worked hard in that case?
+Had he not made it hard sailing for the prisoner? Did he not know very
+well what the bar thought of it? It would be the worst scandal that ever
+blasted judge.
+
+So much there was intimidating in the matter, but nothing more. The
+Judge was a little bit gloomy for a day or two after, and more testy
+with every one than usual.
+
+He locked up the papers; and about a week after he asked his
+housekeeper, one day, in the library:
+
+"Had your husband never a brother?"
+
+Mrs. Carwell squalled on this sudden introduction of the funereal topic,
+and cried exemplary "piggins full," as the Judge used pleasantly to say.
+But he was in no mood for trifling now, and he said sternly:
+
+"Come, madam! this wearies me. Do it another time; and give me an answer
+to my question." So she did.
+
+Pyneweck had no brother living. He once had one; but he died in Jamaica.
+
+"How do you know he is dead?" asked the Judge.
+
+"Because he told me so."
+
+"Not the dead man?"
+
+"Pyneweck told me so."
+
+"Is that all?" sneered the Judge.
+
+He pondered this matter; and time went on. The Judge was growing a
+little morose, and less enjoying. The subject struck nearer to his
+thoughts than he fancied it could have done. But so it is with most
+undivulged vexations, and there was no one to whom he could tell this
+one.
+
+It was now the ninth; and Mr. Justice Harbottle was glad. He knew
+nothing would come of it. Still it bothered him; and to-morrow would see
+it well over.
+
+[What of the paper, I have cited? No one saw it during his life; no one,
+after his death. He spoke of it to Dr. Hedstone; and what purported to
+be "a copy," in the old Judge's hand-writing, was found. The original
+was nowhere. Was it a copy of an illusion, incident to brain disease?
+Such is my belief.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ARRESTED.
+
+
+Judge Harbottle went this night to the play at Drury Lane. He was one of
+those old fellows who care nothing for late hours, and occasional
+knocking about in pursuit of pleasure. He had appointed with two cronies
+of Lincoln's Inn to come home in his coach with him to sup after the
+play.
+
+They were not in his box, but were to meet him near the entrance, and to
+get into his carriage there; and Mr. Justice Harbottle, who hated
+waiting, was looking a little impatiently from the window.
+
+The Judge yawned.
+
+He told the footman to watch for Counsellor Thavies and Counsellor
+Beller, who were coming; and, with another yawn, he laid his cocked-hat
+on his knees, closed his eyes, leaned back in his corner, wrapped his
+mantle closer about him, and began to think of pretty Mrs. Abington.
+
+And being a man who could sleep like a sailor, at a moment's notice, he
+was thinking of taking a nap. Those fellows had no business to keep a
+judge waiting.
+
+He heard their voices now. Those rake-hell counsellors were laughing,
+and bantering, and sparring after their wont. The carriage swayed and
+jerked, as one got in, and then again as the other followed. The door
+clapped, and the coach was now jogging and rumbling over the pavement.
+The Judge was a little bit sulky. He did not care to sit up and open his
+eyes. Let them suppose he was asleep. He heard them laugh with more
+malice than good-humour, he thought, as they observed it. He would give
+them a d----d hard knock or two when they got to his door, and till then
+he would counterfeit his nap.
+
+The clocks were chiming twelve. Beller and Thavies were silent as
+tombstones. They were generally loquacious and merry rascals.
+
+The Judge suddenly felt himself roughly seized and thrust from his
+corner into the middle of the seat, and opening his eyes, instantly he
+found himself between his two companions.
+
+Before he could blurt out the oath that was at his lips, he saw that
+they were two strangers--evil-looking fellows, each with a pistol in
+his hand, and dressed like Bow Street officers.
+
+The Judge clutched at the check-string. The coach pulled up. He stared
+about him. They were not among houses; but through the windows, under a
+broad moonlight, he saw a black moor stretching lifelessly from right to
+left, with rotting trees, pointing fantastic branches in the air,
+standing here and there in groups, as if they held up their arms and
+twigs like fingers, in horrible glee at the Judge's coming.
+
+A footman came to the window. He knew his long face and sunken eyes. He
+knew it was Dingly Chuff, fifteen years ago a footman in his service,
+whom he had turned off at a moment's notice, in a burst of jealousy, and
+indicted for a missing spoon. The man had died in prison of the
+jail-fever.
+
+The Judge drew back in utter amazement. His armed companions signed
+mutely; and they were again gliding over this unknown moor.
+
+The bloated and gouty old man, in his horror, considered the question of
+resistance. But his athletic days were long over. This moor was a
+desert. There was no help to be had. He was in the hands of strange
+servants, even if his recognition turned out to be a delusion, and they
+were under the command of his captors. There was nothing for it but
+submission, for the present.
+
+Suddenly the coach was brought nearly to a standstill, so that the
+prisoner saw an ominous sight from the window.
+
+It was a gigantic gallows beside the road; it stood three-sided, and
+from each of its three broad beams at top depended in chains some eight
+or ten bodies, from several of which the cere-clothes had dropped away,
+leaving the skeletons swinging lightly by their chains. A tall ladder
+reached to the summit of the structure, and on the peat beneath lay
+bones.
+
+On top of the dark transverse beam facing the road, from which, as from
+the other two completing the triangle of death, dangled a row of these
+unfortunates in chains, a hang-man, with a pipe in his mouth, much as we
+see him in the famous print of the 'Idle Apprentice,' though here his
+perch was ever so much higher, was reclining at his ease and listlessly
+shying bones, from a little heap at his elbow, at the skeletons that
+hung round, bringing down now a rib or two, now a hand, now half a leg.
+A long-sighted man could have discerned that he was a dark fellow, lean;
+and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over
+which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin
+were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque.
+
+This fellow took his pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up,
+and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the
+air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering
+over a gibbet, "A rope for Judge Harbottle!"
+
+The coach was now driving on at its old swift pace.
+
+So high a gallows as that, the Judge had never, even in his most
+hilarious moments, dreamed of. He thought he must be raving. And the
+dead footman! He shook his ears and strained his eyelids; but if he was
+dreaming, he was unable to awake himself.
+
+There was no good in threatening these scoundrels. A _brutum fulmen_
+might bring a real one on his head.
+
+Any submission to get out of their hands; and then heaven and earth he
+would move to unearth and hunt them down.
+
+Suddenly they drove round a corner of a vast white building, and under a
+_porte-cochere_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+CHIEF JUSTICE TWOFOLD.
+
+
+The Judge found himself in a corridor lighted with dingy oil-lamps, the
+walls of bare stone; it looked like a passage in a prison. His guards
+placed him in the hands of other people. Here and there he saw bony and
+gigantic soldiers passing to and fro, with muskets over their shoulders.
+They looked straight before them, grinding their teeth, in bleak fury,
+with no noise but the clank of their shoes. He saw these by glimpses,
+round corners, and at the ends of passages, but he did not actually pass
+them by.
+
+And now, passing under a narrow doorway, he found himself in the dock,
+confronting a judge in his scarlet robes, in a large court-house. There
+was nothing to elevate this temple of Themis above its vulgar kind
+elsewhere. Dingy enough it looked, in spite of candles lighted in decent
+abundance. A case had just closed, and the last juror's back was seen
+escaping through the door in the wall of the jury-box. There were some
+dozen barristers, some fiddling with pen and ink, others buried in
+briefs, some beckoning, with the plumes of their pens, to their
+attorneys, of whom there were no lack; there were clerks to-ing and
+fro-ing, and the officers of the court, and the registrar, who was
+handing up a paper to the judge; and the tipstaff, who was presenting a
+note at the end of his wand to a king's counsel over the heads of the
+crowd between. If this was the High Court of Appeal, which never rose
+day or night, it might account for the pale and jaded aspect of
+everybody in it. An air of indescribable gloom hung upon the pallid
+features of all the people here; no one ever smiled; all looked more or
+less secretly suffering.
+
+"The King against Elijah Harbottle!" shouted the officer.
+
+"Is the appellant Lewis Pyneweck in court?" asked Chief-Justice Twofold,
+in a voice of thunder, that shook the woodwork of the Court, and boomed
+down the corridors.
+
+Up stood Pyneweck from his place at the table.
+
+"Arraign the prisoner!" roared the Chief; and Judge Harbottle felt the
+pannels of the dock round him, and the floor, and the rails quiver in
+the vibrations of that tremendous voice.
+
+The prisoner, _in limine_, objected to this pretended court, as being a
+sham, and non-existent in point of law; and then, that, even if it were
+a court constituted by law, (the Judge was growing dazed), it had not
+and could not have any jurisdiction to try him for his conduct on the
+bench.
+
+Whereupon the chief-justice laughed suddenly, and every one in court,
+turning round upon the prisoner, laughed also, till the laugh grew and
+roared all round like a deafening acclamation; he saw nothing but
+glittering eyes and teeth, a universal stare and grin; but though all
+the voices laughed, not a single face of all those that concentrated
+their gaze upon him looked like a laughing face. The mirth subsided as
+suddenly as it began.
+
+The indictment was read. Judge Harbottle actually pleaded! He pleaded
+"Not guilty." A jury were sworn. The trial proceeded. Judge Harbottle
+was bewildered.
+
+This could not be real. He must be either mad, or _going_ mad, he
+thought.
+
+One thing could not fail to strike even him. This Chief-Justice Twofold,
+who was knocking him about at every turn with sneer and gibe, and
+roaring him down with his tremendous voice, was a dilated effigy of
+himself; an image of Mr. Justice Harbottle, at least double his size,
+and with all his fierce colouring, and his ferocity of eye and visage,
+enhanced awfully.
+
+Nothing the prisoner could argue, cite, or state was permitted to retard
+for a moment the march of the case towards its catastrophe.
+
+The chief-justice seemed to feel his power over the jury, and to exult
+and riot in the display of it. He glared at them, he nodded to them; he
+seemed to have established an understanding with them. The lights were
+faint in that part of the court. The jurors were mere shadows, sitting
+in rows; the prisoner could see a dozen pair of white eyes shining,
+coldly, out of the darkness; and whenever the judge in his charge, which
+was contemptuously brief, nodded and grinned and gibed, the prisoner
+could see, in the obscurity, by the dip of all these rows of eyes
+together, that the jury nodded in acquiescence.
+
+And now the charge was over, the huge chief-justice leaned back panting
+and gloating on the prisoner. Every one in the court turned about, and
+gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jury-box
+where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the
+general stillness like a prolonged "hiss-s-s!" was heard; and then, in
+answer to the challenge of the officer, "How say you, gentlemen of the
+jury, guilty or not guilty?" came in a melancholy voice the finding,
+"Guilty."
+
+The place seemed to the eyes of the prisoner to grow gradually darker
+and darker, till he could discern nothing distinctly but the lumen of
+the eyes that were turned upon him from every bench and side and corner
+and gallery of the building. The prisoner doubtless thought that he had
+quite enough to say, and conclusive, why sentence of death should not be
+pronounced upon him; but the lord chief-justice puffed it contemptuously
+away, like so much smoke, and proceeded to pass sentence of death upon
+the prisoner, having named the 10th of the ensuing month for his
+execution.
+
+Before he had recovered the stun of this ominous farce, in obedience to
+the mandate, 'Remove the prisoner,' he was led from the dock. The lamps
+seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoal-fires
+here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of the
+corridors through which he passed. The stones that composed them looked
+now enormous, cracked and unhewn.
+
+He came into a vaulted smithy, where two men, naked to the waist, with
+heads like bulls, round shoulders, and the arms of giants, were welding
+red-hot chains together with hammers that pelted like thunderbolts.
+
+They looked on the prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their
+hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, "Take out
+Elijah Harbottle's gyves;" and with a pincers he plucked the end which
+lay dazzling in the fire from the furnace.
+
+"One end locks," said he, taking the cool end of the iron in one hand,
+while with the grip of a vice he seized the leg of the Judge, and locked
+the ring round his ankle. "The other," he said with a grin, "is welded."
+
+The iron band that was to form the ring for the other leg lay still
+red-hot upon the stone floor, with brilliant sparks sporting up and down
+its surface.
+
+His companion in his gigantic hands seized the old Judge's other leg,
+and pressed his foot immovably to the stone floor; while his senior in a
+twinkling, with a masterly application of pincers and hammer, sped the
+glowing bar round his ankle so tight that the skin and sinews smoked and
+bubbled again, and old Judge Harbottle uttered a yell that seemed to
+chill the very stones, and make the iron chains quiver on the wall.
+
+Chains, vaults, smiths, and smithy all vanished in a moment; but the
+pain continued. Mr. Justice Harbottle was suffering torture all round
+the ankle on which the infernal smiths had just been operating.
+
+His friends Thavies and Beller were startled by the Judge's roar in the
+midst of their elegant trifling about a marriage a-la-mode case which
+was going on. The Judge was in panic as well as pain. The street-lamps
+and the light of his own hall-door restored him.
+
+"I'm very bad," growled he between his set teeth; "my foot's blazing.
+Who was he that hurt my foot? 'Tis the gout--'tis the gout!" he said,
+awaking completely. "How many hours have we been coming from the
+playhouse? 'Sblood, what has happened on the way? I've slept half the
+night?"
+
+There had been no hitch or delay, and they had driven home at a good
+pace.
+
+The Judge, however, was in gout; he was feverish too; and the attack,
+though very short, was sharp; and when, in about a fortnight, it
+subsided, his ferocious joviality did not return. He could not get this
+dream, as he chose to call it, out of his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOMEBODY HAS GOT INTO THE HOUSE.
+
+
+People remarked that the Judge was in the vapours. His doctor said he
+should go for a fortnight to Buxton.
+
+Whenever the Judge fell into a brown study, he was always conning over
+the terms of the sentence pronounced upon him in his vision--"in one
+calendar month from the date of this day;" and then the usual form, "and
+you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead," &c. "That will be
+the 10th--I'm not much in the way of being hanged. I know what stuff
+dreams are, and I laugh at them; but this is continually in my thoughts,
+as if it forecast misfortune of some sort. I wish the day my dream gave
+me were passed and over. I wish I were well purged of my gout. I wish I
+were as I used to be. 'Tis nothing but vapours, nothing but a maggot."
+The copy of the parchment and letter which had announced his trial with
+many a snort and sneer he would read over and over again, and the
+scenery and people of his dream would rise about him in places the most
+unlikely, and steal him in a moment from all that surrounded him into a
+world of shadows.
+
+The Judge had lost his iron energy and banter. He was growing taciturn
+and morose. The Bar remarked the change, as well they might. His friends
+thought him ill. The doctor said he was troubled with hypochondria, and
+that his gout was still lurking in his system, and ordered him to that
+ancient haunt of crutches and chalk-stones, Buxton.
+
+The Judge's spirits were very low; he was frightened about himself; and
+he described to his housekeeper, having sent for her to his study to
+drink a dish of tea, his strange dream in his drive home from Drury Lane
+playhouse. He was sinking into the state of nervous dejection in which
+men lose their faith in orthodox advice, and in despair consult quacks,
+astrologers, and nursery story-tellers. Could such a dream mean that he
+was to have a fit, and so die on the 10th? She did not think so. On the
+contrary, it was certain some good luck must happen on that day.
+
+The Judge kindled; and for the first time for many days, he looked for a
+minute or two like himself, and he tapped her on the cheek with the hand
+that was not in flannel.
+
+"Odsbud! odsheart! you dear rogue! I had forgot. There is young
+Tom--yellow Tom, my nephew, you know, lies sick at Harrogate; why
+shouldn't he go that day as well as another, and if he does, I get an
+estate by it? Why, lookee, I asked Doctor Hedstone yesterday if I was
+like to take a fit any time, and he laughed, and swore I was the last
+man in town to go off that way."
+
+The Judge sent most of his servants down to Buxton to make his lodgings
+and all things comfortable for him. He was to follow in a day or two.
+
+It was now the 9th; and the next day well over, he might laugh at his
+visions and auguries.
+
+On the evening of the 9th, Doctor Hedstone's footman knocked at the
+Judge's door. The doctor ran up the dusky stairs to the drawing-room. It
+was a March evening, near the hour of sunset, with an east wind
+whistling sharply through the chimney-stacks. A wood fire blazed
+cheerily on the hearth. And Judge Harbottle, in what was then called a
+brigadier-wig, with his red roquelaure on, helped the glowing effect of
+the darkened chamber, which looked red all over like a room on fire.
+
+The Judge had his feet on a stool, and his huge grim purple face
+confronted the fire and seemed to pant and swell, as the blaze
+alternately spread upward and collapsed. He had fallen again among his
+blue devils, and was thinking of retiring from the Bench, and of fifty
+other gloomy things.
+
+But the doctor, who was an energetic son of AEsculapius, would listen to
+no croaking, told the Judge he was full of gout, and in his present
+condition no judge even of his own case, but promised him leave to
+pronounce on all those melancholy questions, a fortnight later.
+
+In the meantime the Judge must be very careful. He was over-charged
+with gout, and he must not provoke an attack, till the waters of Buxton
+should do that office for him, in their own salutary way.
+
+The doctor did not think him perhaps quite so well as he pretended, for
+he told him he wanted rest, and would be better if he went forthwith to
+his bed.
+
+Mr. Gerningham, his valet, assisted him, and gave him his drops; and the
+Judge told him to wait in his bedroom till he should go to sleep.
+
+Three persons that night had specially odd stories to tell.
+
+The housekeeper had got rid of the trouble of amusing her little girl at
+this anxious time by giving her leave to run about the sitting-rooms and
+look at the pictures and china, on the usual condition of touching
+nothing. It was not until the last gleam of sunset had for some time
+faded, and the twilight had so deepened that she could no longer
+discern the colours on the china figures on the chimney-piece or in the
+cabinets, that the child returned to the housekeeper's room to find her
+mother.
+
+To her she related, after some prattle about the china, and the
+pictures, and the Judge's two grand wigs in the dressing-room off the
+library, an adventure of an extraordinary kind.
+
+In the hall was placed, as was customary in those times, the sedan-chair
+which the master of the house occasionally used, covered with stamped
+leather, and studded with gilt nails, and with its red silk blinds down.
+In this case, the doors of this old-fashioned conveyance were locked,
+the windows up, and, as I said, the blinds down, but not so closely that
+the curious child could not peep underneath one of them, and see into
+the interior.
+
+A parting beam from the setting sun, admitted through the window of a
+back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the
+chair, shone with a dull transparency through the crimson blind.
+
+To her surprise, the child saw in the shadow a thin man dressed in black
+seated in it; he had sharp dark features; his nose, she fancied, a
+little awry, and his brown eyes were looking straight before him; his
+hand was on his thigh, and he stirred no more than the waxen figure she
+had seen at Southwark fair.
+
+A child is so often lectured for asking questions and on the propriety
+of silence, and the superior wisdom of its elders, that it accepts most
+things at last in good faith; and the little girl acquiesced
+respectfully in the occupation of the chair by this mahogany-faced
+person as being all right and proper.
+
+It was not until she asked her mother who this man was, and observed her
+scared face as she questioned her more minutely upon the appearance of
+the stranger, that she began to understand that she had seen something
+unaccountable.
+
+Mrs. Carwell took the key of the chair from its nail over the footman's
+shelf, and led the child by the hand up to the hall, having a lighted
+candle in her other hand. She stopped at a distance from the chair, and
+placed the candlestick in the child's hand.
+
+"Peep in, Margery, again, and try if there's anything there," she
+whispered; "hold the candle near the blind so as to throw its light
+through the curtain."
+
+The child peeped, this time with a very solemn face, and intimated at
+once that he was gone.
+
+"Look again, and be sure," urged her mother.
+
+The little girl was quite certain; and Mrs. Carwell, with her mob-cap of
+lace and cherry-coloured ribbons, and her dark brown hair, not yet
+powdered, over a very pale face, unlocked the door, looked in, and
+beheld emptiness.
+
+"All a mistake, child, you see."
+
+"_There_, ma'am! see there! He's gone round the corner," said the child.
+
+"Where?" said Mrs. Carwell, stepping backward a step.
+
+"Into that room."
+
+"Tut, child! 'twas the shadow," cried Mrs. Carwell angrily, because she
+was frightened. "I moved the candle." But she clutched one of the poles
+of the chair, which leant against the wall in the corner, and pounded
+the floor furiously with one end of it, being afraid to pass the open
+door the child had pointed to.
+
+The cook and two kitchen-maids came running upstairs, not knowing what
+to make of this unwonted alarm.
+
+They all searched the room; but it was still and empty, and no sign of
+any one's having been there.
+
+Some people may suppose that the direction given to her thoughts by this
+odd little incident will account for a very strange illusion which Mrs.
+Carwell herself experienced about two hours later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE JUDGE LEAVES HIS HOUSE.
+
+
+Mrs. Flora Carwell was going up the great staircase with a posset for
+the Judge in a china bowl, on a little silver tray.
+
+Across the top of the well-staircase there runs a massive oak rail; and,
+raising her eyes accidentally, she saw an extremely odd-looking
+stranger, slim and long, leaning carelessly over with a pipe between his
+finger and thumb. Nose, lips, and chin seemed all to droop downward into
+extraordinary length, as he leant his odd peering face over the
+banister. In his other hand he held a coil of rope, one end of which
+escaped from under his elbow and hung over the rail.
+
+Mrs. Carwell, who had no suspicion at the moment, that he was not a real
+person, and fancied that he was some one employed in cording the Judge's
+luggage, called to know what he was doing there.
+
+Instead of answering, he turned about, and walked across the lobby, at
+about the same leisurely pace at which she was ascending, and entered a
+room, into which she followed him. It was an uncarpeted and unfurnished
+chamber. An open trunk lay upon the floor empty, and beside it the coil
+of rope; but except herself there was no one in the room.
+
+Mrs. Carwell was very much frightened, and now concluded that the child
+must have seen the same ghost that had just appeared to her. Perhaps,
+when she was able to think it over, it was a relief to believe so; for
+the face, figure, and dress described by the child were awfully like
+Pyneweck; and this certainly was not he.
+
+Very much scared and very hysterical, Mrs. Carwell ran down to her room,
+afraid to look over her shoulder, and got some companions about her, and
+wept, and talked, and drank more than one cordial, and talked and wept
+again, and so on, until, in those early days, it was ten o'clock, and
+time to go to bed.
+
+A scullery-maid remained up finishing some of her scouring and
+"scalding" for some time after the other servants--who, as I said, were
+few in number--that night had got to their beds. This was a low-browed,
+broad-faced, intrepid wench with black hair, who did not "vally a ghost
+not a button," and treated the housekeeper's hysterics with measureless
+scorn.
+
+The old house was quiet, now. It was near twelve o'clock, no sounds were
+audible except the muffled wailing of the wintry winds, piping high
+among the roofs and chimneys, or rumbling at intervals, in under gusts,
+through the narrow channels of the street.
+
+The spacious solitudes of the kitchen level were awfully dark, and this
+sceptical kitchen-wench was the only person now up and about, in the
+house. She hummed tunes to herself, for a time; and then stopped and
+listened; and then resumed her work again. At last, she was destined to
+be more terrified than even was the housekeeper.
+
+There was a back-kitchen in this house, and from this she heard, as if
+coming from below its foundations, a sound like heavy strokes, that
+seemed to shake the earth beneath her feet. Sometimes a dozen in
+sequence, at regular intervals; sometimes fewer. She walked out softly
+into the passage, and was surprised to see a dusky glow issuing from
+this room, as if from a charcoal fire.
+
+The room seemed thick with smoke.
+
+Looking in, she very dimly beheld a monstrous figure, over a furnace,
+beating with a mighty hammer the rings and rivets of a chain.
+
+The strokes, swift and heavy as they looked, sounded hollow and distant.
+The man stopped, and pointed to something on the floor, that, through
+the smoky haze, looked, she thought, like a dead body. She remarked no
+more; but the servants in the room close by, startled from their sleep
+by a hideous scream, found her in a swoon on the flags, close to the
+door, where she had just witnessed this ghastly vision.
+
+Startled by the girl's incoherent asseverations that she had seen the
+Judge's corpse on the floor, two servants having first searched the
+lower part of the house, went rather frightened upstairs to inquire
+whether their master was well. They found him, not in his bed, but in
+his room. He had a table with candles burning at his bedside, and was
+getting on his clothes again; and he swore and cursed at them roundly in
+his old style, telling them that he had business, and that he would
+discharge on the spot any scoundrel who should dare to disturb him
+again.
+
+So the invalid was left to his quietude.
+
+In the morning it was rumoured here and there in the street that the
+Judge was dead. A servant was sent from the house three doors away, by
+Counsellor Traverse, to inquire at Judge Harbottle's hall-door.
+
+The servant who opened it was pale and reserved, and would only say that
+the Judge was ill. He had had a dangerous accident; Doctor Hedstone had
+been with him at seven o'clock in the morning.
+
+There were averted looks, short answers, pale and frowning faces, and
+all the usual signs that there was a secret that sat heavily upon their
+minds, and the time for disclosing which had not yet come. That time
+would arrive when the coroner had arrived, and the mortal scandal that
+had befallen the house could be no longer hidden. For that morning Mr.
+Justice Harbottle had been found hanging by the neck from the banister
+at the top of the great staircase, and quite dead.
+
+There was not the smallest sign of any struggle or resistance. There had
+not been heard a cry or any other noise in the slightest degree
+indicative of violence. There was medical evidence to show that, in his
+atrabilious state, it was quite on the cards that he might have made
+away with himself. The jury found accordingly that it was a case of
+suicide. But to those who were acquainted with the strange story which
+Judge Harbottle had related to at least two persons, the fact that the
+catastrophe occurred on the morning of the 10th March seemed a
+startling coincidence.
+
+A few days after, the pomp of a great funeral attended him to the grave;
+and so, in the language of Scripture, "the rich man died, and was
+buried."
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3, by
+Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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