frantic
attempts to regain the confidence of his friends, to break through the
impalpable, impenetrable barrier which the first stir of suspicion had
put between their minds and his. He cried, he begged, he pleaded. But in
vain, all in vain. Suspicion had made his appeals and adjurations sound
even to his friends as strange and meaningless as the Babel-builders'
words of a sudden became to each other. The yellow badge of suspicion
once upon him, all men kept afar, as if he were a fever-ship in
quarantine. No solitary imprisonment in a cell of stone could so utterly
exclude him from the fellowship of men as the invisible walls of this
dungeon of suspicion. And at last he saw himself giving up the hopeless
struggle, yielding to his fate in dumb despair, only praying that the
end might come speedily, perhaps even reduced to the abject-ness of
confessing the crime he had not committed, in order that he might at
least have the pity of men, since he could not regain their confidence.
And so strongly had this vision taken hold on him that his breath came
irregularly, and his forehead was damp as he drew his hand across it.

As has been intimated, it was Mr. Joseph Kil-gore's very bad habit to
waste his nervous tissue in the conscientiously minute elaboration of
such painful imaginary situations as that above described, and in his
present experience there was nothing particularly novel or extraordinary
for him. It was the occurrence of a singular coincidence between this
internal experience and a wholly independent course of actual events,
which made that waking nightmare the beginning of a somewhat remarkable
comedy, or, more properly, a tragedy, of errors. For, as Joseph lay back
in his chair, in a state of nervous exhaustion and moral collapse, the
parlor-door was thrown open, and Mrs. Silas Kilgore, his sister-in-law,
burst into the room. She was quite pale, and her black eyes were fixed
on Joseph's with the eager intensity, as if seeking moral support,
noticeable in those who communicate startling news which they have not
had time to digest.

The effect of this apparition upon Joseph in his unstrung condition may
be readily imagined. He sprang up, much paler than Mrs. Kilgore, his
lips apart, and his eyes staring with the premonition of something
shocking. These symptoms of extraordinary excitement even before she
had spoken, and this air as if he had expected a shocking revelation,
recurred to her mind later, in connecti