just as he was about to be dashed to pieces against a rock, he awoke
sore and feverish.

The sun was already some distance above the horizon as Holden rose
from his troubled slumbers. The cool air of morning flowed with a
refreshing sweetness through the open window, and the birds were
singing in the branches of the large elm. With a feeling of welcome he
beheld the grateful light. He endeavored to recall and reduce to some
coherency the wild images of his dreams, but all was confusion, which
became the more bewildering, the longer he dwelt upon them, and the
more he strove to untangle the twisted skein. All that he could now
distinctly remember, were the place whither he had been led, and the
word spoken by the portrait.

When he descended to breakfast, both Mr. Armstrong and his daughter
remarked his disordered appearance, and anxiously inquired, how he had
passed the night. To these inquiries, he frankly admitted, that he had
been disturbed by unpleasant dreams.

"You look," said Mr. Armstrong, "like the portrait which hangs in the
chamber where you slept. It is," he continued, unheeding the warning
looks of Faith, "the portrait of my father, and was taken a short time
before he was seized with what was called a fit of insanity, and which
was said to have hastened his death.

"How is it possible, dear father, you can say so?" said Faith, anxious
to prevent an impression she was afraid might be made on Holden's
mind.

"I do not mean," continued Armstrong, with a singular persistency,
"that Mr. Holden's features resemble the portrait very much; but there
is something which belongs to the two in common. Strange that I never
thought of it before!"

Holden during the conversation had sat with drooping lids, and a
sad and grieved expression, and now, as he raised his eyes, he said,
mournfully--

"Thou meanest, James, that I, too, am insane. May Heaven grant
that neither thou nor thine may experience the sorrow of so great a
calamity."

Faith was inexpressibly shocked. Had any one else spoken thus, with
a knowledge of Holden's character, she would have considered
him unfeeling to the last degree, but she knew her father's
considerateness and delicacy too well to ascribe it to any other cause
than to a wandering of thought, which had of late rapidly increased,
and excited in her mind an alarm which she trembled to give shape to.
Before she could interpose, Armstrong again spoke--

"Insane!" he said. "What is it