“No, no, no,” interrupted he with irritability; “no, sir, I am not a credulous—far from a superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much the reverse—too sceptical, too slow of belief; but unless I were one whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to contemn the repeated, the perpetual evidence of my own senses, I am now—now at last constrained to believe I have no escape from the conviction, the overwhelming certainty, that I am haunted and dogged, go where I may, by—by a Demon.”
There was an almost preternatural energy of horror in Barton’s face, as, with its damp and death-like lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus delivered himself.
“God help you, my poor friend!” said Doctor Macklin, much shocked. “God help you; for, indeed, you are a sufferer, however your sufferings may have been caused.”
“Ay, ay, God help me,” echoed Barton sternly; “but will He help me? will He help me?”
“Pray to Him; pray in an humble and trusting spirit,” said he.
“Pray, pray,” echoed he again; “I can’t pray; I could as easily move a mountain by an effort of my will. I have not belief enough to pray; there is something within me that will not pray. You prescribe impossibilities—literal impossibilities.”
“You will not find it so, if you will but try,” said Doctor Macklin.
“Try! I have tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion and terror. I have tried in vain, and more than in vain. The awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity oppresses and maddens my brain, whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the Creator; I recoil from the effort, scared, confounded, terrified. I tell you, Doctor Macklin, if I am to be saved, it must be by other means. The idea of the Creator is to me intolerable; my mind cannot support it.”
“Say, then, my dear sir,” urged he, “say how you would have me serve you. What you would learn of me. What can I do or say to relieve you?”
“Listen to me first,” replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an evident effort to suppress his excitement; “listen to me while I detail the circumstances of the terrible persecution under which my life has become all but intolerable—a persecution which has made me fear death and the world beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence.”