from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations
of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right
to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the old
zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they will
prove true.

Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization?
I have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months and
weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new
thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.

Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a
distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to tell
it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is to be my
deliverer, my saviour.

I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent
risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my
former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were
of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest
the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,--anything that
reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as Sir
Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been
resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return
ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor,
but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its menace.

After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt
to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as in
any other way? I am alone in the world,--alone save for my faithful
servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by a
single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion, my
dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier
manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means
of