stman had brought me
an official blue paper that morning, by virtue of which I was informed
of my registration as a regular certificated teacher under the Act of
1871.

As a matter of fact, there was even a greater upheaval after my
departure, but owing to doubts, and to the want of outward and visible
signs to provoke it, the outburst seemed longer in coming. I
considered myself, indeed as girls often do, much more friendless than
I really was.

Then began in my oven prison a period of great silence and regularity.
In writing the tale, I am following the entries in my diary day by day,
and shall endeavour to make a story out of them as best I can. There
is really little to tell, romantic as the circumstances were. As Mad
Jeremy had truly said, the place was warm enough. The absence of the
light of day was what I felt the most--also the lack of all sound,
either of human voice or any living creature. Each alternate weekday I
could hear Jeremy raking his fire to its proper heat before thrusting
in the pans containing his batch of bread. Thrice every day he would
come to bring me something to eat. But never did he offer me the least
violence all the time I remained in the vaulted chamber.

Perhaps the moon was in good season. Perhaps the fool had regained a
little sanity in the mere act of going contrary to his sister. At any
rate his madness showed itself chiefly in his bringing every sort of
musical instrument to my prison house. Upon these he played with
considerable skill, but with a strange, weird, irresponsible irony
running through even the most familiar tunes--something, as one might
say, like "God save the King" played by the host's own piper, when
George the Fourth made his state entrance into his own palace.

It must have been a strange sight to see us, seated of an evening in a
little semicircle, Jeremy with the three younger of his sisters--but
always without Aphra, or Euphrasia, as I found her real name to be.
And these occasions were by no means unwelcome. For, mad as the women
were, there was about them something of the village "innocent," lit
with a certain flame of religious enthusiasm. They were very different
from that tall, stern figure of granite--their elder sister. Honorine,
who had had some training in dressmaking, was always at work with
futile industry, confectioning some garment which, when finished, was
more like the dress of a Christmas guiser or carnival clown than a
respec