to court the same day.

The senior counsel in the case on which I was engaged applied to me for
some information which it was my duty to give him. To my horror and
amazement, I was perfectly unable to collect my ideas; facts and dates
all mingled together confusedly in my mind. I was led out of court
thoroughly terrified about myself. The next day my briefs went back to
the attorneys; and I followed my doctor's advice by taking my passage
for America in the first steamer that sailed for New York.

I had chosen the voyage to America in preference to any other trip by
sea, with a special object in view. A relative of my mother's had
emigrated to the United States many years since, and had thriven there
as a farmer. He had given me a general invitation to visit him if I
ever crossed the Atlantic. The long period of inaction, under the name
of _rest_, to which the doctor's decision had condemned me, could
hardly be more pleasantly occupied, as I thought, than by paying a
visit to my relation, and seeing what I could of America in that way.
After a brief sojourn at New York, I started by railway for the
residence of my host--Mr. Isaac Meadowcroft, of Morwick Farm.

There are some of the grandest natural prospects on the face of
creation in America. There is also to be found in certain States of the
Union, by way of wholesome contrast, scenery as flat, as monotonous,
and as uninteresting to the traveler, as any that the earth can show.
The part of the country in which M. Meadowcroft's farm was situated
fell within this latter category. I looked round me when I stepped out
of the railway-carriage on the platform at Morwick Station; and I said
to myself, "If to be cured means, in my case, to be dull, I have
accurately picked out the very place for the purpose."

I look back at those words by the light of later events; and I
pronounce them, as you will soon pronounce them, to be the words of an
essentially rash man, whose hasty judgment never stopped to consider
what surprises time and chance together might have in store for him.

Mr. Meadowcroft's eldest son, Ambrose, was waiting at the station to
drive me to the farm.

There was no forewarning, in the appearance of Ambrose Meadowcroft, of
the strange and terrible events that were to follow my arrival at
Morwick. A healthy, handsome young fellow, one of thousands of other
healthy, handsome young fellows, said, "How d'ye do, Mr. Lefrank? Glad
to see you, sir. Jump into the