Powell shook his head restlessly, and passed his hand over his forehead with the action of brushing something off. "I was called out before the dawn," he said. "The voices bade me go forth. They sounded like brazen bells in the silence, beating and quivering here," and he pressed his fingers on his temples. "You hear voices which are unheard by other people, then?" "Often. Every day. Every hour." "Tell me--do you not sometimes see forms that other persons cannot see?" Powell started, trembled violently, and looked at Algernon with an expression of bewildered terror. But it was at the same time manifest that some gleam of reason was struggling against the delusions in his mind. He felt and perceived dimly, as one perceives external circumstances through sleep, that a trap was being laid for him. The pathetic questioning look in his eyes, as he vainly tried to recover the government of his mind, was intensely painful. For a second or two, he remained silent with parted lips and clenched hands, like a man making a violent and supreme effort. It seemed as if in another instant he might succeed in gaining sufficient mastery over himself to reply collectedly. But Algernon did not give time for such a chance to happen. He repeated his question more eagerly and loudly, looking at the preacher almost threateningly as he spoke. "Tell me, Mr. Powell, and remember what a responsibility you have assumed before God and man in making this accusation--tell me truly whether you do not see visions--figures of men and women, that other people cannot see? Don't forms appear before your eyes and vanish again as suddenly? Have you not told your landlady, Mrs. Thimbleby, as much on many occasions? How can you dare to assert with confidence, that from the distance you say you were at, you could distinguish my face and that of my wife? All your description of her violent gestures, and kneeling on the ground, and clasping her hands--does not that seem more like the delusions of fancy than the information of your sober senses?" Algernon spoke with indignant heat and rapidity--a calculated heat, a purposed rapidity meant to have a confusing effect on the preacher, and which had that effect; but which also excited a sympathetic indignation in many of the auditors. Powell looked wildly around him, and clasped his hands above his head. "You must put one question at a time, Mr. Errington," said Dr. Evans. "Then I put this question: David Powell, do you, or do you not, see visions and faces and figures that the rest of the world is as unconscious of as of the voices that called you out on to Whit Meadow that morning that my poor wife was drowned?"