, for your own sake. May God bless and restore you, and
bring you to a proper sense of his mercies, is the prayer of your
servant to command, JOSEPH VAN DORNE."

My frame of mind was a very different one when I read this scrawl, from
that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten
night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of
those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned to
me before I read the oracle of our worthy shipmaster; for, in spite of
his disastrous dealing with me on that occasion, misguided as he was by
others, I have reason to so consider him.

But now the influence of the drug that had been given me so recently,
doubtless through want of judgment, by the ship's doctor, was felt in
every nerve; and, as the carriage rolled up the stony quay, I clung
convulsively to Mrs. Raymond, and buried my face and aching forehead in
her shoulder, with a strange revulsion of feeling.

"You dread the darkness," she said, kindly, putting her arm around me as
she spoke; "but it is only for a time; we shall soon come out into the
open lamp-light of--"

"Broadway, New York," interrupted Clayton, sententiously; "a very poor
sight to see, to one who has lived abroad. Have you ever crossed the
waters, Miss Miriam? But I see you are quite faint and overcome. Here,
smell this ether, that the ship's doctor put up expressly for your use,
and recommended highly as a new restorative much in fashion in Paris."

Had the ship's doctor no name, then, that they never mentioned it, and
that he spoke in a demon's voice? His doses I had proved, and was
resolved to take no more of them, and I pushed away the phial, whose
cold glass nose was thrust obtrusively against my own--pushed it away
with all my strength, fast ebbing away as this was, even as I made the
effort.

The cruel potion had possession of me, and entered into every fibre of
my brain through the avenues prepared for it by the treacherous anodyne;
so that, enervated and intoxicated, I yielded passively, after a brief
struggle, to the power of the then newly-invented sedative, called
chloroform.

When the carriage stopped, or whither it transported me, or who lifted
my insensible form to the chamber prepared for me, I know not--never
knew. There was a faint reviving, I remember; a process of disrobing
gone through by the aid of foreign assistance (whose, I recognized
not), then I slumbered profoundly and secur