give him;
but, oh! I've become an instrument of wrath for the punishment of both."

If any feeling of reproof still lingered in my mind, her appearance
disarmed me at once. I felt nothing but pity for her forlorn, helpless
state. It was the apathy of despair, rather than the coldness of
cherished malice, which had so frozen her life. Still, the mystery of
those nightly persecutions!

"Rachel Emmons," I said, "you certainly know that you still continue to
destroy the peace of Eber Nicholson and his family. Do you mean to say
that you _cannot_ cease to do so, if you would?"

"It is too late," said she, shaking her head slowly, as she clasped both
hands hard against her breast. "Do you think I would suffer, night after
night, if I could help it? Haven't I stayed awake for days, till my
strength gave way, rather than fall asleep, for _his_ sake? Wouldn't I
give my life to be free?--and would have taken it, long ago, with my own
hands, but for the sin!"

She spoke in a low voice, but with a wild earnestness which startled me.
She, then, was equally a victim!

"But," said I, "this thing had a beginning. Why did you visit him in the
first place, when, perhaps, you might have prevented it?"

"I am afraid that was my sin," she replied, "and this is the punishment.
When father and mother died, and I was layin' sick and weak, with
nothin' to do but think of _him_, and me all alone in the world, and not
knowin' how to live without him, because I had nobody left,--that's when
it begun. When the deadly kind o' sleeps came on--they used to think I
was dead, or faintin', at first--and I could go where my heart drawed
me, and look at him away off where he lived, 't was consolin', and I
didn't try to stop it. I used to long for the night, so I could go and
be near him for an hour or two. I don't know how I went: it seemed to
come of itself. After a while I felt I was troublin' him and doin' no
good to myself, but the sleeps came just the same as ever, and then I
couldn't help myself. They're only a sorrow to me now, but I s'pose I
shall have 'em till I'm laid in my grave."

This was all the explanation she could give. It was evidently one of
those mysterious cases of spiritual disease which completely baffle our
reason. Although compelled to accept her statement, I felt incapable of
suggesting any remedy. I could only hope that the abnormal condition
into which she had fallen might speedily wear out her vital energies,
already se