I know not how far I had gone, when my strength utterly failed me, and
I sank down helpless, in a lonely place where the houses were few and
scattered, and trees and fields were dimly discernible in the
obscurity beyond. I hid my face in my hands, and tried to assure
myself that I was still in possession of my senses. I strove hard to
separate my thoughts; to distinguish between my recollections; to
extricate from the confusion within me any one idea, no matter
what--and I could not do it. In that awful struggle for the mastery
over my own mind, all that had passed, all the horror of that horrible
night, became as nothing to me. I raised myself, and looked up again,
and tried to steady my reason by the simplest means--even by
endeavouring to count all the houses within sight. The darkness
bewildered me. Darkness?--_Was_ it dark? or was day breaking yonder,
far away in the murky eastern sky? Did I know what I saw? Did I see
the same thing for a few moments together? What was this under me?
Grass? yes! cold, soft, dewy grass. I bent down my forehead upon it,
and tried, for the last time, to steady my faculties by praying; tried
if I could utter the prayer which I had known and repeated every day
from childhood--the Lord's Prayer. The Divine Words came not at my
call--no! not one of them, from the beginning to the end! I started up
on my knees. A blaze of lurid sunshine flashed before my eyes; a
hell-blaze of brightness, with fiends by millions, raining down out of
it on my head; then a rayless darkness--the darkness of the
blind--then God's mercy at last--the mercy of utter oblivion.

* * * * *

When I recovered my consciousness, I was lying on the couch in my own
study. My father was supporting me on the pillow; the doctor had his
fingers on my pulse; and a policeman was telling them where he had