In a few minutes, however, the horrible spectre of a head appeared again, in the immense, immeasurable distance. It approached at the same rapid and threatening rate as before, and with features he thought still more frightful; and, again, he had recourse to the bed-clothes for protection from this terrific visitant. When the head commenced its menacing approach for the third time, Toby's horror exceeded endurance, and he jumped from his low bed, and threw open his little window to catch the cool air. The night breeze speedily dispelled his giddiness, and effectually banished the disturbing figure from his disordered sensory.
Toby stood a few moments attempting to rally his mind, by his old employment of counting the stars in each of the more striking constellations, which were at the time distinctly and brightly visible;—but the hour of midnight, told by the solemn tones of the church clock, warned him to close the window, and endeavour to find the rest he felt he now so much needed. Exhaustion, happily, came to his relief, and Toby forgot the fiery head without a trunk, in more gentle dreams.
Joe heard Toby's relation of this singular visit, the next night, with a degree of phlegm and coolness that amazed the marvel-stricken tailor. Nor could Toby receive for gospel any of the natural explanations of his young friend: it was in vain that Joe recounted what he had lately read of Nicolai, the printer of Berlin, and his wondrous diseased visions,—it was equally in vain that the youth strove to shew Toby that the very manner of the strange head's visit,—so like what was called "phantasmagoria" and other optical delusions,—proved, to a dead certainty, that it all arose from over-excitement of the brain. Toby poohed and pshawed at every thing Joe said,—and was nearer than Joe had ever thought him towards calling his former disciple by some offensive name. The lad was compelled to desist from his attempt to reason Toby out of his uneasy conviction, that he had actually been visited by some evil agent as a punishment for his infraction of the vow he took never to eat food till sunset,—that so he might attain to communion with heavenly angels!
Left to himself, the stricken idealist fell into still more pernicious errors. Witchcraft, was the next delusion he was fated to experience. Not that Toby ever imagined himself to be either a witch or a wizard; but he fell, most obstinately, into the belief,—ay, as obstinately as the knight of La Mancha himself,—that he was under the mischievous power of some who dealt with wicked spirits and practised enchantments. His imagination in this, as in earlier instances of its treacherousness to his judgment, made a rapid, though gradual, abandonment of all self-evident and common-sense conclusions, even in the every-day affairs of life. That nest of temptation—his library—as, also, in the case of the world-known Quixote, was, again, the source from which Toby Lackpenny drew the written proofs for the reality of his credulous vagaries. "Gloomy Glanvil," as critical Toby had called him in the days of his higher spiritual-mindedness, was the superstitious expounder of doctrine to whom the philosophical tailor now attached himself. How could he deny that a compact with evil spirits was possible to fallen human creatures, when he had believed, so heartily, with Swedenborg, that it was possible for sinful man to hold communion with celestial ministers? Besides, was there not the indubitable history of the Witch of Endor, and innumerable other references to dealers with familiar spirits, in the volume of Holy Writ? And were they likely—these wicked and envious agencies of the "evil eye"—to look on any human being so maliciously as on him who had aspired to converse with good angels? Would they not feel an instinctive antipathy towards him? He was convinced they would, as soon as he inwardly asked the question.
He had just lost his thimble while he was thinking thus; and though he hunted for it a full hour, he was not able to find it! What though this had often fallen to his share of ill luck before? It was not, now, to be accounted for as an accident. No: it had been spirited away: he was bewitched; he was sure he was. It was by petty acts of mischief that the withered hags of hell usually commenced their annoyance of those whose aspirations after purity had raised their devilish hate. His case, he feared, was too sure to prove a sorrowful one, for he knew not how to counterwork their malevolence. What a dunce he had been to neglect that branch of occult study! But it might not be too late to acquire even a profound knowledge of it; and so he would set about it in right earnest.
And, poor Toby! he did set about it in earnest, insomuch that he sewed side-seams to tops and bottoms of new garments, and stitched circular patches on square rents, and squares on circular apertures in the damaged attire he undertook to repair, and mislaid his thread where he could not find it for hours,—and pricked his thumbs and fingers, half-callous though they were, with the needles,—and heated his goose till he burnt the cloth,—and fell into blunders and mishaps of most awful consequence to his professional reputation, day by day, more thickly and disastrously, until the very disasters themselves convinced him that he was approaching a climax of knowledge in the gloomy science of which he had now become so devoted a student. The witches knew—foul, cunning, devil-dealers that they were—they knew, although he did not, as yet, ken who they were, that he was about to become a match for them; and, therefore, they were thus bedevilling him and his cloth, and goose, and shears, and thimble, and needles, in this "hey-day, hide-and-seek, burn-it-and-bother-it," sort of way.
Toby would not "give it up," however, torment him as they might—the spiteful fiendlings! He still read and thought, and thought and read, and compared the descriptions of feature which his books contained, with the physiognomies of all who visited his abode, until he entertained a shrewd suspicion of who were the real and identical, though secret, practisers of all this infernal mischief. Yet, as some of these had been, for years, his best and kindest employers, the witch-seer found it go sorely against the grain of his affectionate nature to provoke a quarrel with them. Often did he chide his spirit when he had permitted any of these suspicious visiters to depart with heartfelt thanks for the kindly present of a cake, or a new cheese, or a dish of butter, or half-score of eggs, with which they had coupled their order for the repair of a coat, or nether habit; and as often did he resolve to prepare himself against their next visit for a red-hot quarrel.
Months elapsed before the amiable-hearted visionary could "screw his courage to the sticking-place," so as to enable him to "fall out" with his friends and benefactors: not that he feared their witchery, or the heavier harm it might bring upon him, when he had defied it. He soon lost all dread of that kind. It was his true-heartedness—his genuine gratitude—that precious quality which a rogue never feels, though he talks the most loudly about it, but which honest and noble natures cannot stifle, even when warm friends have become persecuting foes,—it was that superlative virtue which struggled to keep its citadel in gentle Toby's heart's core, and the contest with which was so troublous to him. Happily for the poor mistaken philosopher, his loving-heartedness had rendered him so dear to all who knew him, that none would believe he was in his right mind, when he suddenly became so discourteous and angry-tempered.
"Pr'ythee, Goody, what think'st ta?" said Dolly Dustit, the little hard-working flax-woman, to Peggy the staid housekeeper at Farmer Robinson's,—"is neighbour Toby growing queerish in his heed, wi' so much book-larning,—or, what the plague can be the matter wi' him? I asked him to tell me what yerbs I should get to mak' a green plaister for our Jack's sore scaup, and he grinned like a fummard, and tell'd ma to gooa to the divvil, and as th' oud lad was a friend o' mine he would mak' ma my plaisters, with a witness! Doesn't ta think he's gone stranny?"
"For sartain there's summat the matter wi' his wits, from what our maister was saying about him this morning," answered Peggy; "but who can wonder at it, Dolly? I wonder his knowledge-box hasn't gone wrong-side up'ards many a year since!"