he furtherance of his
designs, was quite natural, he said; but to make use of God's word and
His promises--tut! tut! he said, that was foolishness.

However that may be, the end was, that Webster and Company became very
shaky. They did not, indeed, go into the _Gazette_, but they got into
very deep water; and the principal, ere long, having overwrought all his
powers, was stricken with a raging fever.

It was then that John Webster found his god to be anything but a
comforter, for it sat upon him like a nightmare; and poor Annie, who,
assisted by Mrs Niven, was his constant and devoted nurse, was
horrified by the terrible forms in which the golden idol assailed him.
That fever became to him the philosopher's stone. Everything was
transmuted by it into gold. The counting of guineas was the poor man's
sole occupation from morning till night, and the numbers to which he
attained were sometimes quite bewildering; but he invariably lost the
thread at a certain point, and, with a weary sigh, began over again at
the beginning. The bed curtains became golden tissue, the quilt golden
filigree, the posts golden masts and yards and bowsprits, which now
receded from him to immeasurable distance, and anon advanced, until he
cried out and put up his hands to shield his face from harm; but,
whether they advanced or retired, they invariably ended by being
wrecked, and he was left in the raging sea surrounded by drowning men,
with whom he grappled and fought like a demon, insomuch that it was
found necessary at one time to have a strong man in an adjoining room,
to be ready to come in when summoned, and hold him down. Gold, gold,
gold was the subject of his thoughts--the theme of his ravings--at that
time. He must have read, at some period of his life, and been much
impressed by, Hood's celebrated poem on that subject, for he was
constantly quoting scraps of it.

"Why don't you help me?" he would cry at times, turning fiercely to his
daughter. "How can I remember it if I am not helped? I have counted it
all up--one, two, three, on to millions, and billions, and trillions of
gold, gold, gold, hammered and rolled, bought and sold, scattered and
doled--there, I've lost it again! You are constantly setting me wrong.
All the things about me are gold, and the very food you gave me
yesterday was gold. Oh! how sick I am of this gold! Why don't you take
it away from me?"

And then he would fall into some other train of thought, in