I remember their eyes turning towards the front-room door, of placing my hand on the latch, of standing by a table between the front-windows, of a coffin resting on the white cloth, of people crowding about me,—­but nothing more that night.  Nothing distinctly for weeks and months.  Some confused idea I have of being led about at a funeral, of being told I must sit with the mourners, of the bearers taking off their hats, of being held back from the grave.  But a black cloud rests over all.  I cannot pierce it.  I have no wish to.  I can’t even tell whether I really took her cold hand in mine, and bid her good-bye, or whether that was one of the terrible dreams which came to me every night.  I know that at last I refused to go to bed, but walked all night in the fields and woods.

I believe that insane people always know the feelings and the plans of those about them.  I knew they were thinking of taking me to an asylum.  I knew, too, that I was the means of Jamie’s being sick, and that they tried to keep it from me.  I read in their faces,—­“Jamie got a fever that wet night at the shore; but don’t tell Joseph.”

As I look back upon that long gloom, a shadowy remembrance comes to me of standing in the door-way of a darkened chamber.  A minister in white bands stood at the foot of the bed, performing the marriage-ceremony.  I remember Jamie’s paleness, and the heavenly look in Mary’s face, as she stood at the bedside, holding his right hand in hers.  Mother passed her hand over my head, and whispered to me that Mary wanted to take care of him.

One of my fancies was, that a dark bird, like a vulture, constantly pursued me.  All day I was trying to escape him, and all the while I slept he was at my pillow.

As I came to myself I found this to be a form given by my excited imagination to a dark thought which would give me no rest.  It was the idea that my conduct had been the means of Margaret’s death.  I never dared question.  They said it was fever,—­that others died of the same.  If I could but have spoken to her,—­could but have seen, once more, the same old look and smile!  This was an ever-present thought.

But I did afterwards.  I told her everything.  She knows my folly and my grief.

It was in the night-time.  I was walking through the woods, on the road to Swampsey Village.  Margaret walked beside me for a long way.  Just before she left me, she said,—­

“Do you hear the surf on the beach?”

I said, “Yes, I hear the surf.”

“And what is it saying?”

I listened a moment, then answered,—­

“It says, ‘Woe! woe! woe!’”

She said, “Listen again.”

While I was listening, she disappeared.  But a moment afterwards I heard a voice speaking in the midst of the surfs roaring.  It was just as plain and distinct as the minister’s from the pulpit.  It said, “Endure! endure! endure.”

I might think that all this, even my seeing Margaret, was only a creation of my disordered mind, were it not for something happening afterwards which proved itself.