on the floor in strange convulsions, Hide, hide me, roared he out, from the offended ghost! Stop, stop that stream of blood! it will swallow me! See! I am encompassed with a liquid fire! all hell is on me! Awaked and frighted with such dreadful sounds, I have perforce broken the chain of sleep, and taken him to my arms; but, oh! what tremblings had the dire visions left on all his frame! in vain, with every art of fond, endearing love, did I endeavour to bring him back to peace; too well I saw tranquillity was banished from his breast, and he but wore a show of soft contentment. As nothing ought to be a secret between persons whom love and law had united in the sacred tie of marriage, I pressed him, with all the tenderness I was capable of expressing, to reveal to me the cause of his affliction; but never could I obtain from him this proof of what he had so often sworn, to deny me nothing I could ask, and in his power to grant; but, on the contrary, he told me that he had in reality no cause for grief, that those troubled visions were a disorder hereditary to his family, and that it was madness to impute the wild ideas of fancy, in which reason had no part, to any real disorder in the waking mind, which he assured me was entirely free from remorse, or guilt of any secret sin, which should occasion such confusion, as he was sensible sometimes appeared in him. I cannot say I was perfectly satisfied with this reply; but having frequently spoke to him on this head, and finding him still the same, and at last to grow a little uneasy, that I expressed a diffidence in what he said, I was obliged to give over any farther interrogatories concerning the affair: his disorders, however, encreasing, especially in sleep, gave me also perturbations which were very terrible to sustain: he so frequently crying out on blood, made me indeed think some had been shed by unwarrantable means; and more than once it struck into my mind, how dreadful a ruin we must be involved in, if by any accident he and my brother should have met, and it should be
