strike on my mind sharp and clear, but swim along hazy and undefined;
and especially is it the case with later memories.

"What was the sight, my dear Carr, that I saw on that hill-top? Was
it nothing but the uneasiness of mind and memory disturbed and
disorganized by the seething of the foul poison-wine, throwing up
pictures and ideas out of their due course, and without subordination
to the master-will? Was it merely the story of those fisher-folk,
half apprehended, and yet evoked and subtly clad with form and shape
by the strange workshop of imagination?

"To all of these I am quite content to say 'Yes.' The sight does not
trouble me, or, indeed, anything but interest me. I am not
superstitious; I am not nervous in the least. Only I can not help
feeling as if, catching, in my weakened state, the hideous leprosy of
the place, I had received into my mind, then less able than usual to
resist, the stamp and impress of some other mind forced to linger
near that spot, and unable to avoid brooding over some haunting
remorseful thought or image of a deed, ever dismally recalling how
he stood in grim silence watching the tears and prayers of the
two soft-faced smooth-limbed Roman boys, kidnapped from some
sunny Italian villa, and carried to that gloomy place—held them
pitilessly on the altar among the other fork-bearded Druids, with
their white robes and glaring eyes—and smote the cruel blow, in
spite of the trembling touch of the young fingers and the piteous
entreaties, as they looked tearfully from side to side in the damp
sunless Golgotha, among the glens of that sinister isle.

"That is the picture that somehow or other, even in my most material
mood, is evoked by the thought of the place. The rationalist