paired to his bedroom. There was nothing in his case, Doctor
Parkes believed, to warrant his keeping any watch upon Marston's actions,
and accordingly he bid him good-night, in the full confidence of meeting
him, if not better, at least not worse, on the ensuing morning.

He miscalculated, however. Marston had probably himself been conscious of
some coming crisis in his hideous malady, when he took the decisive step
of placing himself under the care of Doctor Parkes. Certain it is, that
upon that very night the disease broke forth in a new and appalling
development. Doctor Parkes, whose bedroom was next to that occupied by
Marston, was awakened in the dead of night by a howling, more like that
of a beast than a human voice, and which gradually swelled into an
absolute yell; then came some horrid laughter and entreaties, thick and
frantic; then again the same unearthly howl. The practiced ear of Doctor
Parkes recognized but too surely the terrific import of those sounds.
Springing from his bed, and seizing the candle which always burned in his
chamber, in anticipation of such sudden and fearful emergencies, he
hurried with a palpitating heart, and spite of his long habituation to
such scenes as he expected, with a certain sense of horror, to the
chamber of his aristocratic patient.

Late as it was, Marston had not yet gone to bed; his candle was still
burning, and he himself, half dressed, stood in the center of the floor,
shaking and livid, his eyes burning with the preterhuman fires of
insanity. As Doctor Parkes entered the chamber, another shout, or rather
yell, thundered from the lips of this demoniac effigy; and the mad-doctor
stood freezing with horror in the doorway, and yet exerting what remained
to him of presence of mind, in the vain endeavor, in the flaring light of
the candle, to catch and fix with his own practiced eye the gaze of the
maniac. Second after second, and minute after minute, he stood
confronting this frightful slave of Satan, in the momentary expectation
that he would close with and destroy him. On a sudden, however, this
brief agony of suspense was terminated; a change like an awakening
consciousness of realities, or rather like the withdrawal of some hideous
and visible influence from within, passed over the tense and darkened
features of the wretched being; a look of horrified perplexity, doubt,
and inquiry, supervened, and he at last said, in a subdued and sullen
tone, to Doctor Parkes:

"