me, because Christ had commanded me to stand there.  A little while before the break of day the Savior appeared and told me to go.  I started to run, but when I got alongside the old depot there burst from it the combined screams of millions of incarnate devils.  I can hear in fancy still the avalanche of voices which rolled from those lost myriads.  I ran into the first house to which I came.  Its saw at a glance what was the nature of my terrible trouble, but he had no power to help me.  I beheld the face of a black fiend grinning on me through a window.  In the center of his forehead was an enormous and fiery eye, and about his sinister mouth the grin which I at first saw became demoniacal.  He called the fiends, and I heard them come as a rushing tornado, and surround the house.  Everything I attempted to do was anticipated by them.  If I thought of moving my hand I heard them say, “Look! he is going to lift his hand.”  No matter what I did or thought of doing, they cursed me.

When daylight at last came—­and oh, what an age of dying agony lay behind it in the vast hollow darkness of the night!—­the horrid objects disappeared, but the voices remained and talked with me all day.  You who read, imagine yourselves alone in a room, or walking deserted streets, with voices articulating words to you with as clear distinctness as words were ever spoken to you.  Many of the voices were those of friends and acquaintances whom I knew to be in their graves, and yet they—­their voices—­were conversing with, or talking to me, during the whole of that long, long, terrible day.  I was tortured with fears and a dread of something infinitely horrible.  I went to my office—­the voices were there!  I stepped to the window, and on the street were men congregating in front of the building.  I could hear their voices, and they were all talking of hanging me.  I had committed an appalling crime, they said.  I knew not where to go or whither to fly.  Now and then I could hear strains of music.  The dreaded night came on, and with it the fiends returned.  In the excitement of breaking from my office, I forgot to put on my overcoat.  The moment I got on the street the freezing wind drove me back, but hundreds of voices gathered around me and threatened me with death if I entered the door again.  I went away followed by them, and wandered in a thin coat up and down the streets, and through the woods all night.  The wonder was that I did not freeze to death.  I could hear crowds of excited people at the court house discussing me, I thought.  When I started to go there, every door and window of the building flew open and fiery devils darted out and cursed me away.  All the time I was dying for whisky, but the saloon keepers would not give me a drop.  They saw and understood what was the matter with me, and refused to finish the work begun in their dens.  I started at last in the direction of home.  Just outside of the town a man by my side showed me a bottle of whisky.  I was dying