The gloom fell on us as we entered, and
did not shift till ten o'clock, when we crawled out, as it were,
from beneath it.
"It has been bad this summer," said Mrs. M'Leod in a whisper
after we realised that we were freed. "Sometimes I think the
house will get up and cry out--it is so bad."
"How?"
"Have you forgotten what comes after the depression ?"
So then we waited about the small fire, and the dead air in the
room presently filled and pressed down upon us with the sensation
(but words are useless here) as though some dumb and bound power
were striving against gag and bond to deliver its soul of an
articulate word. It passed in a few minutes, and I fell to
thinking about Mr. Baxter's conscience and Agnes Moultrie, gone
mad in the well-lit bedroom that waited me. These reflections
secured me a night during which I rediscovered how, from purely
mental causes, a man can be physically sick; but the sickness was
bliss compared to my dreams when the birds waked. On my
departure, M'Leod gave me a beautiful narwhal's horn, much as a
nurse gives a child sweets for being brave at a dentist's.
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