came to me--I had often read that the victims of a certain
form of mania imagined all others to be insane. My plain and
straightforward answers to his vague and rambling interrogations had
failed of the desired effect. Being themselves mad, they thought me mad.
It was a horrifying situation.

I rose to my feet--I had been kneeling throughout this extraordinary
interview--with a confused thought of eluding their clutches and fleeing
from them. In imagination I already saw my murdered form hidden in the
trackless wilds.

"No, you don't!" exclaimed the whiskered man, placing violent and
detaining hands on me. "That's all right," he continued, as the son
closed in on me: "I kin handle the little killdee by myself. . . . Now,
sonny," he went on, again directing himself to me as I struggled and
writhed, helpless in his grasp, "you come along with me!"

"Hold on!" called the son. "There's a lot of other stuff here--blankets
and truck. He's been makin' quite a collection."

"Never mind," bade his parent, roughly turning me about and from behind
propelling my resisting form violently forward. "I reckin they was gifts
from the Mound Builders, too. We'll come back later on and sort out the
plunder."

As I was shoved along I endeavoured to explain. I exclaimed; I cried
out; I entreated them to stop and to hearken. My pleadings were of no
avail and, I am constrained to believe, would have been of no avail even
had not distress and agitation rendered me to an extent incoherent. My
abductors only urged me onward through the woods at great speed.

"Gee! Hear him rave, dad!" I heard the son pant from behind me.

Merciful Providence! Now their warped and perverted mentalities
translated my speech into ravings!

Almost immediately, as it seemed to me, we emerged from the forest into
a ploughed field; and but a short distance away I beheld a human
domicile--in short, a farmhouse. Filled with sudden relief when I
realised that a civilised habitation stood in such hitherto unsuspected
proximity to our late camping place, and instantly possessed with a
great and uncontrollable craving to reach this haven of refuge and claim
the protection of its inhabitants, I wrested myself free from the
bearded man with one mighty effort, leaving my flowing collar in his
hands, and at top speed set off across the field, crying out as I ran:
"Help! Help! Succour! Assistance!" or words to that effect.

My flight continued but a few yards. I was ove