But they did not answer her. They dragged her away from the spot and placed her in a waiting carriage. Then they drove away, and one of them said, significantly:
"She is so exhausted by her long tramp that she will not be violent, and we shall get her back to the asylum without any trouble."
Kathleen did not notice what they said. She was so dazed and frightened by her troubles that her memory was almost gone. She put her white hands to her brow and tried to recall her wandering thoughts, to remember her name, and why she was here. But she could not do it—everything was cloudy and vague. With a helpless, fluttering sigh, she resigned herself to her strange fate, and crouched shiveringly into the corner of the carriage that lumbered along the country road a good seven miles before it came to a standstill before a large, gloomy, prison-like building.
It was a lunatic asylum, and hapless Kathleen had rushed upon a strange fate.
A handsome young woman, who had gone mad over the treachery of a false lover, was being conveyed to the asylum, and had cunningly eluded her keepers and escaped into the woods. A reward was offered for her apprehension, and a large number of men had formed themselves into searching parties. As none of them had seen her, and she answered perfectly to the description, one of these parties had taken Kathleen into custody. At the asylum it was the same way. No one had seen her, so the captive was accepted without any doubts as to her identity, her hatless condition and dazed manners keeping up the illusion of her insanity. The men received their reward and went away, never doubting that they had found the right girl.
Kathleen was put to bed in a small cell by a kind but illiterate attendant, and, still dazed and dumb with horror, sunk into a deep sleep. Food had been offered her, and she had eaten a very little, then pushed it away with a repellant gesture. After that, she was left alone, and slept wearily for long hours, awaking refreshed and in her right mind.
She could remember everything now—her flight from home, her journey that had been interrupted by her terrible experience of robbery and attempted murder. Then the long trance, her terrified revival in her coffin, and the frenzied flight into the darkness of the chilly night. All flashed over her mind in the first, walking moment, and she wondered why those strange men had captured and brought her here to this strange place.
"And what a miserable little room and bed; not one quarter as good as Susette's," she murmured, with a glance of disdain around her at the tiny cell.
Alas! she soon became aware of the painful fact that she was an inmate of an asylum for the insane, was believed to be insane herself, and was called by the name of Daisy Lynn.