the time, I knew nothing of all this. A thunderbolt, as it were,
destroyed at one blow every relic, every trace of my previous
existence; and I began life all over again, with that terrible scene
of blood as my first birthday and practical starting point.

I remember it all even now with horrible distinctness. Each item in
it photographed itself vividly on my mind's eye. I saw it as in a
picture--just as clearly, just as visually. And the effect, now I
look back upon it with a maturer judgment, was precisely like a
photograph in another way too. It was wholly unrelated in time and
space: it stood alone by itself, lighted up by a single spark,
without rational connection before or after it. What led up to it
all, I hadn't the very faintest idea. I only knew the Event itself
took place; and I, like a statue, stood rooted in the midst of it.

And this was the Picture as, for many long months, it presented
itself incessantly to my startled brain, by day and by night, awake
or asleep, in colours more distinct than words can possibly paint
them.

I saw myself standing in a large, square room--a very handsome old
room, filled with bookshelves like a library. On one side stood a
table, and on the table a box. A flash of light rendered the whole
scene visible. But it wasn't light that came in through the window.
It was rather like lightning, so quick it was, and clear, and
short-lived, and terrible. Half-way to the door, I stood and looked
in horror at the sight revealed before my eyes by that sudden flash.
A man lay dead in a little pool of blood that gurgled by short jets
from a wound on his left breast. I didn't even know at the moment
the man was my father; though slowly, afterward, by the concurrent