ardly had strength to reach the road. That was the first time it
occurred to me that I might not find all as I left them.

As I came to dwelling--houses, however, I grew calm again, and even
smiled at my foolishness,--or tried to.

Mr. Nathaniel's house came before ours. I saw there was a light in the
kitchen, and stepped softly through the back-yard, thinking some one
might be sick. The windows were small and high. The curtains were made
of house-paper. One of them was not quite let down. I looked in
underneath it, and saw two old women sitting by the fire. Something to
eat was set out on a table, and the teapot was on the hearth. One stick
had broken in two. The smoking brands stood up in the corners. There was
just a flicker of flame in the candlestick. It went out while I was
looking. I saw that the old women were dozing. I opened the outside-door
softly, and stood in the porch. There was a latch-string to the inner
one. As soon as I pulled it the door opened. In my agitation I forgot
there was a step up, and so stumbled forward into the room. They both
started to their feet, holding on by the pommels of the chairs. They
were frightened.

"What are you here for?" I gasped out.

"Watching with the dead!" whispered one of them.

"Who?"

They looked at each other; they knew me then.

I remember their eyes turning towards the front-room door, of placing my
hand on the latch, of standing by a table between the front-windows, of
a coffin resting on the white cloth, of people crowding about me,--but
nothing more that night. Nothing distinctly for weeks and months. Some
confused idea I have of being led about at a funeral, of being told I
must sit with the mourners, of the bearers taking off their hats, of
being held back from the grave. But a black cloud rests over all. I
cannot pierce it. I have no wish to. I can't even tell whether I really
took her cold hand in mine, and bid her good-bye, or whether that was
one of the terrible dreams which came to me every night. I know that at
last I refused to go to bed, but walked all night in the fields and
woods.

I believe that insane people always know the feelings and the plans of
those about them. I knew they were thinking of taking me to an asylum. I
knew, too, that I was the means of Jamie's being sick, and that they
tried to keep it from me. I read in their faces,--"Jamie got a fever
that wet night at the shore; but don't tell Joseph."

As I look back upon that l