"When the Le Noirs came home, the first night of their arrival they
entered my room, seized me in my bed and dragged me shrieking from it!"
"Good heaven! What punishment is sufficient for such wretches!"
exclaimed Traverse, starting up and pacing the narrow limits of the
cell.
"Listen! They soon stopped both my shrieks and my breath at once. I
lost consciousness for a time, and when I awoke I found myself in a
close carriage, rattling over a mountain road, through the night. Late
the next morning we reached an uninhabited country house, where I was
again imprisoned, in charge of an old dumb woman, whom Le Noir called
Mrs. Raven. This I afterwards understood to be Willow Heights, the
property of the orphan heiress, Clara Day. And here, also, for the term
of my stay, the presence of the unknown inmate got the house the
reputation of being haunted.
"The old dumb woman was a shade kinder to me than Dorcas Knight had
been, but I did not stay in her charge very long. One night the Le
Noirs came in hot haste. The young heiress had been delivered from
their charge by a degree of the Orphans' Court, and they had to give up
her house. I was drugged and hurried away. Some narcotic sedative must
have been insinuated into all my food, for I was in a state of
semi-sensibility and mild delirium during the whole course of a long
journey by land and sea, which passed to me like a dream, and at the
end of which I found myself here. No doubt, from the excessive use of
narcotics, there was some thing wild and stupid in my manner and
appearance that justified the charge of madness. And when I found that
I was a prisoner in a lunatic asylum, far, far away from the
neighborhood where at least I had once been known I gave way to the
wilder grief that further confirmed the story of my madness. I have
been here two years, occasionally giving way to outbursts of wild
despair, that the doctor calls frenzy. I was sinking into an apathy,
when one day I opened the little Bible that lay upon the table of my
cell. I fixed upon the last chapters in the gospel of John. That
narrative of meek patience and divine love. It did for me what no power
under that of God could have done. It saved me! It saved me from
madness! It saved me from despair! There is a time for the second birth
of every soul; that time had come for me. From that hour, this book has
been my constant companion and comfort. I have learned from its pages
how little it matters how or where this fleeting, mortal life is
passed, so that it answers its purpose of preparing the soul for
another. I have learned patience with sinners, forgiveness of enemies,
and confidence in God. In a word, I trust I have learned the way of
salvation, and in that have learned everything. Your coming and your
words, young friend, have stirred within my heart the desire to be
free, to mingle again on equal terms with my fellow beings, and above
all, to find and to embrace my child. But not wildly anxious am I even
for these earthly blessings. These, as well as all things else, I
desire to leave to the Lord, praying that His will may be mine. Young
friend, my story is told."