king up and
laying down my note-book as I spoke, so as to display my ostensible
occupation to the peering eyes of Mrs. Clayton (now sitting bolt upright
in her bed, looking like a Chinese bonze), for the purpose of sweeping
in my position definitively.

"That will do, Dinah. Now go and get Miss Monfort's bath ready," I
heard my dragoness say, after a short whispered communication from her
early visitor. It was the idea, probably, to remove me, as well as
Dinah, while the plot was being unfolded, and my bath-room, with its
closed door, promised security from quick ears and eyes to the brace of
conspirators now plotting their final blow.

Once in that belfry, and truly might the sense of Dante's famous
inscription become my motto for life: "Here hope is left behind."

I covered my eyes as I recalled that dreary, dreadful prison-house of
clock and bell, into which I had clambered once by means of a movable
step-ladder, rarely left there by the attendant, in order to rescue my
famished cat, shut up there by accident. I recollected the maddened look
of the creature, as it flew by me like a flash, frightened out of its
wits, Mrs. Austin had said, by the clicking of the machinery of the huge
clock, and the chiming of the responsive bell. Both were silent now, and
there was room enough for a prisoner's cot in that lonely and dismantled
turret as there once had been for a telescope and its rest, used for
astronomical purposes at long intervals by my father and a few of his
scientific friends, but finally dismantled and put aside forever.

I could imagine myself a denizen, at the will of Bainrothe, of that
weird, gray belfry, shut up with that silent clock, in company with a
bed, a chair, and table, denied, perchance, even the comfort of a stove,
for fear the flue might utter smoke, and, with it, that kind of
revelation, said proverbially to accompany such manifestations; denied
books, even writing-materials, the sight of a human face, and furnished
with food merely sufficing in quantity and quality to keep soul and body
together!

Could I resist this state of things? Could I sustain it and retain my
reason? No, I felt that the picture my fancy drew, if realized, would
make me abject and submissive, change me to a cowardly, cringing slave.
I was not made of the right stuff for martyrdom, only for battle, for
resistance, and would put forth my last powers in the effort to save
myself from the unendurable trials before me, eve