rtaken and felled to the
earth, my captors thereupon taking steps to effectually restrain me in
the free exercise of my limbs and bodily movements. This being one of
the most acutely distressing features of the entire experience I shall
forego further details, merely stating that they used a rope.

It was at this juncture that the powers of connected thought and lucid
speech deserted me. I retain an indistinct recollection of being borne
bodily into a farm dwelling, of being confronted by a gaunt female who,
disregarding my frantic efforts to explain all, persisted in listening
only to the rambling accounts of my abductors, and who, on hearing from
them their confused version of what had transpired, retreated to a
distance and refused to venture nearer until my bonds had been
reinforced with a strap.

Following this I recall vaguely being given to drink of a glass
containing milk--milk of a most peculiar odour and pungent taste.
Plainly this milk had been drugged; for though in my then state of mind
I was already bordering on delirium, yet an instant after swallowing the
draught my faculties were miraculously restored to me. I spoke
rationally--indeed, convincingly; but, owing to an unaccountable
swelling of my tongue, due no doubt to the effects of the drug, my
remarks to the biased ears of those about me must have sounded
inarticulate, not to say incoherent. However, I persisted in my efforts
to be understood until dizziness and a great languor overcame me
entirely.

A blank ensued--I must have swooned.

I shall now draw this painful narrative to a close, dismissing with
merely a few lines those facts that in a garbled form have already
reached the public eye through the medium of a ribald and disrespectful
press--how my youthful companions, returning betimes to our camping
place and finding me gone, and finding also abundant signs of a
desperate struggle, hastened straightway to return home by the first
train to spread the tidings that I had been kidnapped; how search was at
once instituted; how, late that same evening, after running down various
vain clues, my superior, the Reverend Doctor Tubley, arrived at
Hatchersville aboard a special train, accompanied by a volunteer posse
of his parishioners and other citizens and rescued me, semi-delirious
and still fettered, as my captors were on the point of removing me, a
close prisoner, to the Branch State Asylum for the Insane at Pottsburg,
twenty miles distant, in