On the evening of the day following that on which I signed the pledge I
went straight home from my workshop, with a dreadful feeling of some
impending calamity haunting me. In spite of the encouragement I had
received, the presentiment of coming evil was so strong that it bowed
me almost to the dust with apprehension. The slakeless thirst still
clung to me; and water, instead of allaying it, seemed only to increase
its intensity.

I was fated to encounter one struggle more with my enemy before I
became free. Fearful was that struggle. God in his mercy forbid that
any young man should endure but a tenth part of the torture which
racked my frame and agonized my heart.

As in the former attack, horrible faces glared upon me from the
walls--faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible
features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of
burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment
the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as
the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in
my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably
bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time;
and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would
stretch out all quivering with life. After a frightful paroxysm of
this kind I would start like a maniac from my bed, and beg for life,
life! What I of late thought so worthless seemed now to be of
unappreciable value. I dreaded to die, and clung to existence with a
feeling that my soul's salvation depended on a little more of life.

In about a week I gained, in a great degree, the mastery over my