s words and the vista of horrors they
disclosed. I was intoxicated. I was drunk. I say it with shame; and on
hearing Sir George's threat my half-frenzied imagination ran riot into the
foreboding future.

All the candles, save one tottering wick, were dead in their sockets, and
the room was filled with lowering phantom-like shadows from oaken floor
to grimy vaulted roof beams. Sir George, hardly conscious of what he did
and said, all his evil passions quickened with drink, leaned his hands
upon the table and glared across at me. He seemed to be the incarnation of
rage and ferocity, to so great a pitch had he wrought himself. The
sputtering candle feebly flickered, and seemed to give its dim light only
that the darksome shadows might flit and hover about us like vampires on
the scent of blood. A cold perspiration induced by a nameless fear came
upon me, and in that dark future to which my heated imagination travelled
I saw, as if revealed by black magic, fair, sweet, generous Dorothy,
standing piteously upon Bowling Green hillside. Over her drooping form
there hung in air a monster cloudlike image of her father holding in its
hand a deadly bludgeon. So black, so horrid was this shadow-demon that I
sprang from my chair with a frightful oath, and shrieked:--

"Hell is made for man because of his cruelty to woman."

Sir George had sunk into his chair. Liquor had finished its work, and the
old man, resting his head upon his folded arms, leaned forward on the
table. He was drunk--dead to the world. How long I stood in frenzied
stupor gazing at shadow-stricken Dorothy upon the hillside I do not know.
It must have been several minutes. Blood of Christ, how vividly I remember
the vision! The sunny radiance of the girl's hair was darkened and dead.
Her bending attitude was one of abject grief. Her hands covered her face,
and she was the image of woe. Suddenly she lifted her head with the quick
impulsive movement so familiar in her, and with a cry eloquent as a
child's wail for its mother called, "John," and held out her arms
imploringly toward the dim shadowy form of her lover standing upon the
hill crest. Then John's form began to fade, and as its shadowy essence
grew dim, despair slowly stole like a mask of death over Dorothy's face.
She stood for a moment gazing vacantly into space. Then she fell to the
ground, the shadow of her father hovering over her prostrate form, and the
words, "Dead, dead, dead," came to me in horrifyin