“Let the child go,” I shouted in a voice of thunder; “let her go, I say—­let her go.”

He took the passive, death-like child, and placed her standing by the window, and rising, he simply said—­

“As soon as you grow cool, you are welcome to ask me what questions you like.  The child is plainly ill.  I should not wonder if she had seen something that frightened her.”

Having thus spoken, he passed from the room.  I felt as if I spoke, saw, and walked in a horrid dream.  I seized the darling child in my arms, and bore her away to her mother.

“What is it—­for mercy’s sake what is the matter?” she cried, growing in an instant as pale as the poor child herself.

“I found that—­that demon—­in the parlour with the child on his lap, staring in her face.  She is manifestly terrified.”

“Oh! gracious God! she is lost—­she is killed,” cried the poor mother, frantically looking into the white, apathetic, meaningless face of the child.

“Fanny, darling Fanny, tell us if you are ill,” I cried, pressing the little girl in terror to my heart.

“Tell your own mother, my darling,” echoed my poor little wife.  “Oh! darling, darling child, speak to your poor mother.”

It was all in vain.  Still the same dilated, imploring gaze—­the same pale face—­wild and dumb.  We brought her to the open window—­we gave her cold water to drink—­we sprinkled it in her face.  We sent for the apothecary, who lived hard by, and he arrived in a few moments, with a parcel of tranquillising medicines.  These, however, were equally unavailing.

Hour after hour passed away.  The darling child looked upon us as if she would have given the world to speak to us, or to weep, but she uttered no sound.  Now and then she drew a long breath as though preparing to say something, but still she was mute.  She often put her hand to her throat, as if there was some pain or obstruction there.

I never can, while I live, lose one line of that mournful and terrible portrait—­the face of my stricken child.  As hour after hour passed away, without bringing the smallest change or amendment, we grew both alarmed, and at length absolutely terrified for her safety.

We called in a physician toward night, and told him that we had reason to suspect that the child had somehow been frightened, and that in no other way could we at all account for the extraordinary condition in which he found her.

This was a man, I may as well observe, though I do not name him, of the highest eminence in his profession, and one in whose skill, from past personal experience, I had the best possible reasons for implicitly confiding.

He asked a multiplicity of questions, the answers to which seemed to baffle his attempts to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis.  There was something undoubtedly anomalous in the case, and I saw plainly that there were features in it which puzzled and perplexed him not a little.