through space.  Some force, which had tight hold of me, so that I felt myself an atom in its grasp, was hurrying me on over an endless slender bridge, under which on either side a loud torrent rushed at a vertiginous depth below.  At first our helpless flight,—­for I was bound hand and foot like Mazeppa,—­proceeded in a straight line, but presently it began to curve, and we raced and roared along, in what gradually became a monstrous vortex, reverberant with noises, loud with light, while, as we proceeded, enormous concentric circles engulfed us, and wheeled above and about us.  It seemed as if we,—­I, that is, and the undefined force which carried me,—­ were pushing feverishly on towards a goal which our whole concentrated energies were bent on reaching, but which a frenzied despair in my heart told me we never could reach, yet the attainment of which alone could save us from destruction.  Far away, in the pulsation of the great luminous whorls, I could just see that goal, a ruby-coloured point waxing and waning, and it bore, or to be exact it consisted of the letters of the word CARMINE.

This agitating vision recurred night after night, and filled me with inexpressible distress.  The details of it altered very little, and I knew what I had to expect when I crept into bed.  I knew that for a few minutes I should be battling with the chill of the linen sheets, and trying to keep awake, but that then, without a pause, I should slip into that terrible realm of storm and stress in which I was bound hand and foot, and sent galloping through infinity.  Often have I wakened, with unutterable joy, to find my Father and Miss Marks, whom my screams had disturbed, standing one on each side of my bed.  They could release me from my nightmare, which seldom assailed me twice a night—­but how to preserve me from its original attack passed their understanding.  My Father, in his tenderness, thought to exorcize the demon by prayer.  He would appear in the bedroom, just as I was first slipping into bed, and he would kneel at my side.  The light from a candle on the mantel-shelf streamed down upon his dark head of hair while his face was buried in the coverlid, from which a loud voice came up, a little muffled, begging that I might be preserved against all the evil spirits that walk in darkness and that the deep might not swallow me up.

This little ceremony gave a distraction to my thoughts, and may have been useful in that way.  But it led to an unfortunate circumstance.  My Father began to enjoy these orisons at my bedside, and to prolong them.  Perhaps they lasted a little too long, but I contrived to keep awake through them, sometimes by a great effort.  On one unhappy night, however, I gave even worse offense than slumber would have given.  My Father was praying aloud, in the attitude I have described, and I was half sitting, half lying in bed, with the clothes sloping from my chin.  Suddenly a rather large insect—­dark and flat, with more legs than a self-respecting insect