instrument, used to clean the oil-holes when they became clogged. This
bit of steel was five or six inches long, and was shaped like a pencil.
For at least three months, I seldom went out of doors that I did not go
with the intention of purloining that steel spike. I intended then to
keep it in my room against the day of my anticipated transfer to jail.

It was now that my delusions protected me from the very fate they had
induced me to court. For had I not believed that the eye of a detective
was on me every moment, I could have taken that spike a score of times.
Often, when it was not in use, I walked to the lawnmower and even laid
my hand upon the tool-box. But I dared not open it. My feelings were
much like those of Pandora about a certain other box. In my case,
however, the box upon which I looked with longing had Hope without, and
not within. Instinctively, perhaps, I realized this, for I did not lift
the lid.

One day, as the patients were returning to their wards, I saw, lying
directly in my path (I could even now point out the spot), the coveted
weapon. Never have I seen anything that I wanted more. To have stooped
and picked it up without detection would have been easy; and had I
known, as I know now, that it had been carelessly dropped there,
nothing could have prevented me from doing so and perhaps using it with
fatal effect. But I believed it had been placed there deliberately and
as a test, by those who had divined my suicidal purpose. The eye of the
imagined detective, which, I am inclined to believe, and like to
believe, was the eye of the real God, was upon me; and though I stepped
directly over it, I did not pick up that thing of death.