om his own disordered intellect?

It was a long time before sleep visited the Solitary in his soft
and curtained bed. It might be owing to the events of the day, so
startling and unusual; it might be on account of the yielding bed,
so different from his own hard couch; or in consequence of the effect
produced by the portrait; or of all these causes combined, that sleep
was long in coming, and when it did come, was disturbed with dreams,
and unrefreshing. Before, however, Holden fell asleep, he had lain, as
if under the influence of a spell, looking at the picture on which the
beams of the moon, stealing through the branches of the large elm
that shaded the house, flickered uncertainly and with a sort of wierd
effect, as the night wind gently agitated the leaves.

It seemed to Holden, so insensibly glided his last waking thought into
his dreams making one continuous whole, that the portrait he had been
looking at was a living person, and he was astonished that he had
mistaken a living being for a piece of painted canvas. In a stern,
deep voice the man who had taken possession of the chair in which he
himself had been sitting, ordered him to approach. If Holden had been
so disposed, he had no ability to disobey the command. He, therefore
advanced towards the figure, and at a signal knelt down at his feet.
The man, thereupon, stretching out his hands, laid them upon his head
in the attitude of benediction. He then rose from his seat, and making
a sign to Holden to follow him, they noiselessly descended the stairs
together, and passed into the moonlight. The man constantly preceding
him, they went on, and by familiar paths and roads, and in the
ordinary time that would be required to accomplish the distance,
arrived at a spot on the banks of the Wootuppocut well known to
Holden. Here the stranger stopped, and seating himself upon the trunk
of a felled tree, motioned to his companion to be seated. Holden
obeyed, waiting for what should follow. Presently he saw two figures,
a male and female, approaching. The latter was veiled, and although
the face of the man was exposed, it swam in such a hazy indistinctness
that it was impossible to make out the features. Still it seemed to
him that they were not entirely unknown, and he tormented himself with
ineffectual attempts to determine where he had seen them. He turned to
his guide to ask who they were, but before he could speak the stranger
of the portrait placed his fingers on h