to her knife and fork.

The number drawn to-night was One. On examination of the Purple Volume,
it proved to be my turn to read again.

"Our story to-night," I said, "contains the narrative of a very
remarkable adventure which really befell me when I was a young man.
At the time of my life when these events happened I was dabbling in
literature when I ought to have been studying law, and traveling on the
Continent when I ought to have been keeping my terms at Lincoln's Inn.
At the outset of the story, you will find that I refer to the county
in which I lived in my youth, and to a neighboring family possessing
a large estate in it. That county is situated in a part of England
far away from The Glen Tower, and that family is therefore not to be
associated with any present or former neighbors of ours in this part of
the world."

After saying these necessary words of explanation, I opened the first
page, and began the story of my Own Adventure. I observed that my
audience started a little as I read the title, which I must add, in
my own defense, had been almost forced on my choice by the peculiar
character of the narrative. It was "MAD MONKTON."

BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY of MAD MONKTON

CHAPTER I.

THE Monktons of Wincot Abbey bore a sad character for want of
sociability in our county. They never went to other people's houses,
and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter living near them,
never received anybody under their own roof.

Proud as they all certainly were, it was not pride, but dread, which
kept them thus apart from their neighbors. The family had suffered for
generations past from the horrible affliction of hereditary insanity,
and the members of it shrank from exposing their calamity to others, as
they must have exposed it if they had mingled with the busy little world
around them. There is a frightful story of a crime committed in past
times by two of the Monktons, near relatives, from which the first
appearance of the insanity was always supposed to date, but it is
needless for me to shock any one by repeating it. It is enough to say
that at intervals almost every form of madness appeared in the family,
monomania being the most frequent manifestation of the affliction among
them. I have these particulars, and one or two yet to be related, from
my father.

At the period of my youth but three of the Monktons were left at the
Abbey--Mr. and Mrs. Monkton and their only child Alfred