“When the physician placed his hand upon my head, as is the necessary formula to bring me into spiritual communion with my interrogator, I relapsed almost immediately into the syncope of the clairvoyant state, and of course became entirely unconscious of what I uttered in that condition. But our host, who was his most intimate friend, has given me many times the following explanation of the scene:—
“He says that when the physician placed his hand upon my head, I first said from the sleep, ‘I am content! All is pure here—this is a holy soul—one that is regenerate and will be saved!’ and then that while I was recounting his many deeds of kindness to the poor and friendless, and the rich, I suddenly shrank back, exclaiming, ‘Blood! blood! blood! There is blood upon this hand! This soul is darkened now with blood! Here is some fearful crime! Murder has been committed by this hand; everything seems red beneath it!’ My friend says the doctor staggered back as if he had been shot, on hearing this, turned pale as death, and swooned on the floor; and after he recovered, acknowledged that he had committed murder and fled from the consequences; the name by which he was now known was an assumed one, and he implored his host not to expose him to the penalty of the gallows by revealing these terrible facts.
“My friend, of course, did everything he could to relieve him on that point, and assured him that he would never breathe the fact where it could injure him; that the purity of his life for so many years had cancelled the enormity of the crime, so far as society was concerned.
“But in spite of all this, the wretched and guilty man left the house in overwhelming despair, and the last I have heard of him was that he had locked himself in his own house, and was killing himself with the most unheard-of excesses in drinking brandy, to which vice he never before had been addicted.
“When I realised the tragic results of this fearful insight, with which I seem to have been mysteriously endowed, my very soul was shaken with sorrow; and since that time my spirit has wrestled in agonies of prayer with God, that this poor child of crime and headlong vices might be ‘saved!’”
As the woman uttered these last words, Manton recognised, for the first time, and with a shudder, a peculiar obliquity of the left eye. His soul was chilled within him; and for the moment, the light of the glowing room was darkened as if the shadow of drear winter had passed over and through it.
Doctor Weasel exclaimed gaily, “Is not that extraordinary? I assure you, I have myself witnessed things in connection with this power of hers, quite as inexplicable, though happily not so tragic.”
“It sounds strangely enough,” said Manton, shortly.
“I assure you I have no means of accounting for these things,” said the woman in a meek, deprecatory tone.
“Suppose you demonstrate it, madam, in my case;” and a slight sneer, which crossed the face of Manton, whose manner had entirely changed, did not escape the hawk-like quickness of the woman’s eye. “My life, I am willing to submit to the scrutiny of your inscrutable sense.”