to soothe the patient with gentle words, but she (mistaking him for
a pettifogging lawyer, whom D'Alton had engaged to bind her over to
keep the peace) cried out:

"Ah, yes! you want to quiet me, but _you can't_ quiet me. I am like
the surging cataract, which, suppressed in one place bursts out
again with more fury in another. I have suffered too much to be
tamed down by soft and gilded promises. No, Robert D'Alton, you have
started the mighty avalanche and it is too late now to stop its
progress."

The doctor began to feel he had a desperate case in hand and tried
to quiet her, but the more he did so the worse she got till at last
all persons began to talk to her, receiving from the poor girl
replies altogether removed from the point at issue coupled with
threats and oaths and furious gesticulations. At length the doctor
suggested, in a whisper, the propriety of their departure, when they
might consider what was best to be done, but, on Mrs. Brookes
protesting that she was afraid to stay alone in the house with the
maniac, Dr. Tuffnell dispatched a note to the asylum, and in a short
time two keepers arrived, and proceeded to take Miss Wilson into
their care till she should become possessed of a sound mind.

There is no time at which a sane person looks so much like a maniac
as when trying to convince people of his sanity. The real lunatic
will cunningly hide his affliction from the most watchful, and is
frequently able to deceive those unaccustomed to deal with persons
of unsound mind, but the victim of persecution becomes wild with
honest indignation, and generally manages to convince even those who
might be inclined to believe him to be sane.