ged through the house. In all my life I never
heard so frightful a commotion. The being that occasioned it all now
began to mount the ladder towards our loft, on which the lad in the bed
next the ladder sprung from his couch, crying out: "The L--d A--y
preserve us! What can it be?" With that he sped across the loft and by
my bed, praying lustily all the way; and, throwing himself from the
other end of the loft into a manger, he darted, naked as he was,
through among the furious horses, and, making the door that stood open,
in a moment he vanished and left me in the lurch. Powerless with
terror, and calling out fearfully, I tried to follow his example; but,
not knowing the situation of the places with regard to one another, I
missed the manger, and fell on the pavement in one of the stalls. I was
both stunned and lamed on the knee; but, terror prevailing, I got up
and tried to escape. It was out of my power; for there were divisions
and cross divisions in the house, and mad horses smashing everything
before them, so that I knew not so much as on what side of the house
the door was. Two or three times was I knocked down by the animals, but
all the while I never stinted crying out with all my power. At length,
I was seized by the throat and hair of the head, and dragged away, I
wist not whither. My voice was now laid, and all my powers, both mental
and bodily, totally overcome; and I remember no more till I found
myself lying naked on the kitchen table of the farm-house, and
something like a horse's rug thrown over me. The only hint that I got
from the people of the house on coming to myself was that my absence
would be good company; and that they had got me in a woeful state, one
which they did not choose to describe, or hear described.

As soon as day-light appeared, I was packed about my business, with the
hisses and execrations of the yeoman's family, who viewed me as a being
to be shunned, ascribing to me the visitations of that unholy night.
Again was I on my way southwards, as lonely, hopeless, and degraded a
being as was to be found on life's weary round. As I limped out the
way, I wept, thinking of what I might have been, and what I really had
become: of my high and flourishing hopes when I set out as the avenger
of God on the sinful children of men; of all that I had dared for the
exaltation and progress of the truth; and it was with great difficulty
that my faith remained unshaken, yet was I preserved from that s