pleasure which was half pain. I have woke
up at night from a delirious dream to sob out
her name and call passionately upon her. I
knew, at the same time, that my passion
was irrational and absurd, and that she
was not worthy of it. Belief in the object is
not necessary to love. A man shall be well
convinced in his heart that no good can
come of his success, that peace and happiness
do not lie there—nay, shall be sure of
the moral perversity of her he worships—
yet shall be ready to risk life and soul to
get her.

My brother's passion was equally vehement,
and he became savagely jealous of me.
I think he had greater faith in her than I
—showed his feelings with less disguise, and
was therefore more cruelly sported with. In
wooing a coquette—and Katy was born a
coquette—he who feels or betrays least
emotion will have most chance of success, for
he can avoid unpleasing manifestations while
his rival is morbidly sensitive to every look,
word and action: at once exacting, slavish
and rebellious.

Katy cared for neither of us, but her
fickle favours were sometimes bestowed upon
me (I was considered the handsomer),
though always with an air of seniority which
her one year's difference in age rendered
equally ludicrous and exasperating.
Tormented by her caprice I found a cruel
pleasure in augmenting Jack's sufferings. Very
soon he hated me with all the strength of his
fierce ungovernable nature. She knew it, and
unconscious of the depth and danger of the
feelings excited, triumphed in it.

Of course we made no confidants. I cannot
tell how my uncle became enlightened as
to the existing state of affairs. When that
happened, his scorn of what he considered our
juvenile folly seemed to intensify his brutality.
Coarse jibes and stinging jeers alternated
with blows and ill-usage,and were still harder
to bear, for boys are always sensitive in the
extreme to ridicule, especially on that topic.
He taunted us to our faces before strangers,
coupled every reproach addressed to us with
some sneering allusion to Katy, grinned at
our presumed jealousy of one another, and, in
a word, made our lives unendurable. He was
a strong man or he might have come off
with mortal injury in some of the furious
struggles which ensued. After one of these,
Katy, weeping with rage and vexation,
vowed that she would never speak to us
again.

That pleased him for a time. I think the
devil put it into his head to illuse her,
as he did afterwards. Or it might have been
merely to spite us. I have said that he was
more considerate towards her than others.
Now he began to chide, to strike her. Shall
I ever forget witnessing the first blow? I
did not wait for the second.

I remember going to her that evening with
some wild project of flight which my brother
was to share. (He had manifested such
frenzied rage during her chastisement that
my uncle locked him in an empty room,
imprisoning him for some days.) She cried,
but seemed to think much lighter of the matter
than I; its influence had already faded from
her variable temperament. Henceforth, however,
she shared our uncle's brutality with
us. What would have come of this—how far
we should have been able to endure it—I
do not know, had he refrained from one act.
In a fit of sheer malignancy he, one day, took
a pair of scissors and cut off a quantity of
Katy's hair. It was long and beautiful, and
she had been excessively proud of it.

That night, when we had been ordered off
to bed, there was an expression in Jack's face
which frightened me. He had been unusually
taciturn all day—we never talked much
together of late, but this day fewer words
than ever passed between us. I tried to draw
him into conversation, without success. And
I noticed that he trembled very much when
he lay down beside me. It was my uncle's
custom to lock us in, but this night, of all
nights in the year, he omitted to do so.

Unable to sleep for a long time, I lay listening
to the wind without. It was a wild,
blusterous night, such a one as had always
exerted an unquiet influence upon me; such
a one as I shall, now, never contemplate
without horror, to my dying day.
(Sometimes I fancy that day will be its counterpart.)
No moon was visible as I looked out of our
curtainless casement, and a rack of heavy
black clouds moved rapidly and continuously
athwart the face of the heavens. The wind
made a dismal clamor among the chimney-
pots, and now and then a fierce dash of rain
drove against the window-panes. Fearing to
speak to my brother, and as scared and
troubled in mind as though some evil influence
were abroad.—Was there not?—I lay
listening, until from sheer weariness I
tumbled, as from a precipice, into the arms of
sleep.

That brought no relief. My dreams
partook of my mental disquiet. At first they
were confused, formless, chaotically horrible.
I was harassed by an overpowering nameless
dread, haunted by an ever-changing phantasm
which nothing could exorcise, and the
presence of which inflicted unimaginable
misery and apprehension. This horror grew,
like one of the evil genii in the Arabian
Nights, until it filled up my entire
imagination, and then abruptly ended. I still
slept, laboriously, painfully, as oppressed by
a heavy night-mare, yet, by a strange
clairvoyance, I became conscious of the existence
of external objects. I saw the black shadows
on the floor, the impenetrable darkness
brooding in the corners of the room, and
heard the wind raging without. More than
that, though my brother lay with his back
towards me, and his face to the wall, I SAW
his face as distinctly as if it were fronting