I would give much to be rid of it, for it
is connected with all that is worst in my life. I had it before
Navarino, when no one expected an engagement. It made me believe I
should be killed, and drove me to what was much worse--or at least I
used to think so.'
'Don't you now?' I asked.
'No,' said Clarence. 'It was a great mercy that I did not die then.
There's something to conquer first. But you'll never speak of this,
Ted. I have left off telling of such things--it only gives another
reason for disbelieving me.'
However, this time his veracity was not called in question,--but he
was supposed to be under a hallucination, the creation of the noises
acting on his imagination and memory of the persecuted widow, which
must have been somewhere dormant in his mind, though he averred that
he had never heard of it. It had now, however, made a strong
impression on him; he was convinced that some crime or injustice had
been perpetrated, and thought it ought to be investigated; but
Griffith made us laugh at his championship of this shadow of a
shade, and even wrote some mock heroic verses about it,--nor would
it have been easy to stir my father to seek for the motives of an
apparition which no one in the family save Clarence professed to
have seen.
The noises were indisputable, but my mother began to suspect a cause
for them.
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