ere I awoke. It was the sight of the
barricade I had erected at my door gave me a clew to the past, and again
I buried my face in my hands, and wept bitterly.

CHAPTER XXVIII. RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT

I could not hear the loud and repeated knockings which were made at my
door, as at first waiters, and then the landlord himself, endeavored
to gain admittance. At length a ladder was placed at the window, and a
courageous individual, duly armed, appeared at my casement and summoned
me to surrender. With what unspeakable relief did I learn that it was
not to apprehend or arrest me that all these measures were taken: they
were simply the promptings of a graceful benevolence; a sort of rumored
intimation having got about, that I had taken prussic acid, or was
being done to death by charcoal. Imagine a prisoner in a condemned cell
suddenly awakened, and hearing that the crowd around him consisted not
of the ordinary, the sheriff, Mr. Calcraft and Co., but a deputation of
respectable citizens come to offer the representation of their borough
or a piece of plate, and then you can have a mild conception of the
pleasant revulsion of my feelings. I thanked my public in a short
but appropriate address. I assured them, although there was a popular
prejudice about doing this sort of thing in November in England, that it
was deemed quite unreasonable at other times, and that really, in
these days of domestic arsenic and conjugal strychnine, nothing but
an unreasonable impatience would make a man self-destructive,--suicide
arguing that as a man was really so utterly valueless, it was worth
nobody's while to get rid of him. My explanation over, I ordered
breakfast.

"Why not dinner?" said the waiter. "It is close on four o'clock."

"No," said I; "the ladies will expect me at dinner."

"The ladies are near Constance by this, or else the roads are worse than
we thought them."

"Near Constance! Do you mean to say they have gone?"

"Yes, sir, at daybreak; or, indeed, I might say before daybreak."

"Gone! actually gone!" was all that I could utter.

"They never went to bed last night, sir; the old lady was taken very
ill after tea, and all the house running here and there for doctors and
remedies, and the young lady, though she bore up so well, they tell me
she fainted when she was alone in her own room. In fact, it was a piece
of confusion and trouble until they started, and we may say, none of us
had a moment's peace till