Here the poor wretch fairly broke down, bursting suddenly into an uncontrollable fit of weeping.  I waited quietly until the violence of his passion had subsided.  A misery so strange, so completely out of the range of human experience, so hopeless apparently, was not to be reached by the ordinary utterances of consolation.  I had seen enough to enable me fully to understand the fearful nature of the retribution which had been visited upon him for what was, at worst, a weakness to be pitied, rather than a sin to be chastised.  “Never was a man worse punished,” he had truly said.  But I was as far as ever from comprehending the secret of those nightly visitations.  The statement of Rachel Emmons, that they were now produced without her will, overturned—­supposing it to be true—­the conjecture which I might otherwise have adopted.  However, it was now plain that the unhappy victim sobbing at my side could throw no further light on the mystery.  He had told me all he knew.

“My friend,” said I, when he had become calmer, “I do not wonder at your desperation.  Such continual torment as you must have endured is enough to drive a man to madness.  It seems to me to spring from the malice of some infernal power, rather than the righteous justice of God.  Have you never tried to resist it?  Have you never called aloud, in your heart, for Divine help, and gathered up your strength to meet and defy it, as you would to meet a man who threatened your life?”

“Not in the right way, I’m afeard,” said he.  “Fact is, I always tuck it as a judgment hangin’ over me, an’ never thought o’ nothin’ else than jist to grin and bear it.”

“Enough of that,” I urged,—­for a hope of relief had suggested itself to me,—­“you have suffered enough, and more than enough.  Now stand up to meet it like a man.  When the noises come again, think of what you have endured, and let it make you indignant and determined.  Decide in your heart that you will be free from it, and perhaps you may be so.  If not, build another shanty and sleep away from your wife and boy, so that they may escape, at least.  Give yourself this claim to your wife’s gratitude, and she will be kind and forbearing.”

“I don’t know but you’re more ’n half right, stranger,” he replied, in a more cheerful tone.  “Fact is, I never thought on it that way.  It’s lightened my heart a heap, tellin’ you; an’ if I’m not too broke an’ used-up-like, I’ll try to foller your advice.  I couldn’t marry Rachel now, if Mary Ann was dead, we’ve been druv so fur apart.  I don’t know how it’ll be when we’re all dead:  I s’pose them ’ll go together that belongs together;—­leastways, ’t ought to be so.”

Here we struck the Bloomington road, and I no longer needed a guide.  When we pulled our horses around, facing each other, I noticed that the flush of excitement still burned on the man’s sallow cheek, and his eyes, washed by probably the first freshet of feeling which had moistened them for years, shone with a faint lustre of courage.