find
herself not undrest. She turned on her side: something pulled her by
the wrist. She must have a bracelet on, and it was entangled in the
coverlet! She tried to unclasp it, but could not: which of her
bracelets could it be? There was something attached to it!--a chain--a
thick chain! How odd! What could it mean? She lay quiet, slowly waking
to fuller consciousness.--Was there not a strange air, a dull odour in
the room? Undefined as it was, she had smelt it before, and not long
since!--It was the smell of the lost chapel!--But that was at home in
the castle! she had left it two days before! Was she going out of her
mind?

The dew of agony burst from her forehead. She would have started up,
but was pulled hard by the wrist! She cried on God.--Yes, she was lying
on the very spot where that heap of woman-dust had lain! she was
manacled with the same ring from which that woman's arm had wasted--the
decay of centuries her slow redeemer! Her being recoiled so wildly from
the horror, that for a moment she seemed on the edge of madness. But
madness is not the sole refuge from terror! Where the door of the
spirit has once been opened wide to God, there is he, the present help
in time of trouble! With him in the house, it is not only that we need
fear nothing, but that is there which in its own being and nature casts
out fear. God and fear cannot be together. It is a God far off that
causes fear. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." Such a sense of
absolute helplessness overwhelmed Arctura that she felt awake in her an
endless claim upon the protection of her original, the source of her
being. And what sooner would any father have of his children than
action on such claim! God is always calling us as his children, and
when we call him as our father, then, and not till then, does he begin
to be satisfied. And with that there fell upon Arctura a kind of sleep,
which yet was not sleep; it was a repose such as perhaps is the sleep
of a spirit.

Again the external began to intrude. She pictured to herself what the
darkness was hiding. Her feelings when first she came down into the
place returned on her memory. The tide of terror began again to rise.
It rose and rose, and threatened to become monstrous. She reasoned with
herself: had she not been brought in safety through its first and most
dangerous inroad?--but reason could not outface terror. It was fear,
the most terrible of all terrors, that she feared. Then again woke her