“When first this happened, I thought I was released.  I was now a new man.  A day passed—­a night—­and no return, and a blessed week—­a week—­another week.  I was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and praying.  A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with me again.”

CHAPTER VIII

The Second Stage

“It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior, was now active.  It was perfectly unchanged in every other respect.  This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and soon in other ways.

“For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it were always brooding over some atrocious plan.  Its eyes, as before, were never off me.”

“Is it here now?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a day—­fifteen days.  It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two months, once for three.  Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although it may be but by a single day.  Fifteen days having past since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment.”

“Is its return,” I asked, “accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?”

“Nothing—­no,” he said.  “It is simply with me again.  On lifting my eyes from a book, or turning my head, I see it, as usual, looking at me, and then it remains, as before, for its appointed time.  I have never told so much and so minutely before to any one.”

I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the morning, but he said: 

“No, if you don’t mind hearing it all now.  I have got so far, and I should prefer making one effort of it.  When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had nothing like so much to tell.  You are a philosophic physician.  You give spirit its proper rank.  If this thing is real—­”

He paused looking at me with agitated inquiry.

“We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully.  I will give you all I think,” I answered, after an interval.

“Well—­very well.  If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing, little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell.  Optic nerves, he talked of.  Ah! well—­there are other nerves of communication.  May God Almighty help me!  You shall hear.

“Its power of action, I tell you, had increased.  Its malice became, in a way, aggressive.  About two years ago, some questions that were pending between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession.  I was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended something like it.  The reason of my saying so is this—­”