"He does say something on the subject then, since he denies the stick being his? Did he talk to you willingly on the subject?" asked Mrs. Costello.
Mr. Strafford answered her question by another.
"Have you courage and strength to see him?"
"Yes; if you think it well for me to do so."
Lucia caught her mother's hand.
"You have not, mamma, you must not go! Mr. Strafford, she cannot bear the exertion."
"You do not know what I can bear, my child. Certainly this, if it is needful or advisable."
"You will find it less trying in some ways than you perhaps expect," Mr. Strafford went on, "and in others more so. There is nothing in the man you will see to remind you of the past, and yet my great reason for thinking it well for you to see him is a hope that you may be able to recall the past to him, so as to bring him back to something like clearness of comprehension. It seems as if nothing less would do so."
"What do you mean? Does not he know you?"
"I can scarcely tell. I do not know why I should not tell you plainly the truth, which you will have to hear before you see him. His mind is either completely gone, or terror and imprisonment have deadened it for the time. The other men who have been working with him say that he was sane enough when he was sober up to the time of the murder. Certainly he is not sane now. But that may well be a temporary thing caused by his illness and the confinement."