faculties. For some weeks I became a pitiable maniac, and in every
sense the wreck of my former self; and seven entire weeks, together
with the better half of an eighth week, had passed over my head whilst
I lay unconscious of time and its dreadful freight of events, excepting
in so far as my disordered brain, by its fantastic coinages, created
endless mimicries and mockeries of these events--less substantial, but
oftentimes less afflicting, or less agitating. It would have been well
for me had my destiny decided that I was not to be recalled to this
world of wo. But I had no such happiness in store. I recovered, and
through twenty and eight years my groans have recorded the sorrow I
feel that I did.

* * * * *

I shall not rehearse circumstantially, and point by point, the sad
unfolding, as it proceeded through successive revelations to me, of all
which had happened during my state of physical incapacity. When I first
became aware that my wandering senses had returned to me, and knew, by
the cessation of all throbbings, and the unutterable pains that had so
long possessed my brain, that I was now returning from the gates of
death, a sad confusion assailed me as to some indefinite cloud of evil
that had been hovering over me at the time when I first fell into a
state of insensibility. For a time I struggled vainly to recover the
lost connection of my thoughts, and I endeavored ineffectually to
address myself to sleep. I opened my eyes, but found the glare of light
painful beyond measure. Strength, however, it seemed to me that I had,
and more than enough, to raise myself out of bed. I made the attempt,
but fell back, almost giddy with the effort. At the sound of the
disturbance which I had thus made, a woman whom I did not know came
from behind a curtain, and spoke to me. Shrinking from any