our dim
eyes, for there is nothing the matter with me."

"Ah, Robert, you are ill!" cried she. "You are very ill, my dear boy;
you are quite changed; your very voice and manner are changed. Ah,
Jane, haste you up to the study, and tell Mr. Wringhim to come here on
the instant and speak to Robert."

"I beseech you, woman, to restrain yourself," said I. "If you suffer
your frenzy to run away with your judgment in this manner, I will leave
the house. What do you mean? I tell you, there is nothing ails me: I
never was better."

She screamed, and ran between me and the door, to bar my retreat: in
the meantime my reverend father entered, and I have not forgot how he
gazed, through his glasses, first at my mother, and then at me. I
imagined that his eyes burnt like candles, and was afraid of him, which
I suppose made my looks more unstable than they would otherwise have
been.

"What is all this for?" said he. "Mistress! Robert! What is the matter
here?"

"Oh, sir, our boy!" cried my mother; "our dear boy, Mr. Wringhim! Look
at him, and speak to him: he is either dying or translated, sir!"

He looked at me with a countenance of great alarm; mumbling some
sentences to himself, and then taking me by the arm, as if to feel my
pulse, he said, with a faltering voice: "Something has indeed befallen
you, either in body or mind, boy, for you are transformed, since the
morning, that I could not have known you for the same person. Have you
met with any accident?"

"No."

"Have you seen anything out of the ordinary course of nature?"

"No."

"Then, Satan, I fear, has been busy with you, tempting you in no
ordinary degree at this momentous crisis of your life?"

My mind turned on my associate for the day, and the idea that he might
be an agent of the Devil had such an effect on me that I could make no
answer.

"I see how it is," said he; "you are troubled in spirit, and I have no
doubt that the enemy of our salvation has been busy with you. Tell me
this, has he overcome you, or has he not?"

"He has not, my dear father," said I. "in the strength of the Lord, I
hope I have withstood him. But indeed, if he has been busy with me, I
knew it not. I have been conversant this day with one stranger only,
whom I took rather for an angel of light."

"It is one of the Devil's most profound wiles to appear like one," said
my mother.

"Woman, hold thy peace!" said my reverend father. "Thou pretendest to
teach what thou knowest not