Among the effects of the young woman, Wilder had discovered a book in which she kept a journal. She had called for it as soon as she was able to write; and, as a woman’s observation is keener than a man’s, it is best to introduce here (and in other places throughout the narrative) such extracts from her journal as seem helpful. CHAPTER SIX THE following is from the lady’s journal: “Yes, I will write it again, absurd though it may turn out to be: There is some mystery about this cabin. I have tried over and over to convince myself that my weakness and the unnatural situation in which I am placed make me morbid and suspicious; but I know that I am still a hard-headed woman, without a particle of nonsense in my composition; and I know that I am able to see things in their proper light, and to understand them in a way. And I say that the signs of something wrong here are growing more and more evident, without furnishing me the least clue to the nature of the mystery; but I feel that, whatever the mystery is, it is one to be dreaded. I try not to think about it; but where is the sense in that? Is it not better for me to do all the observing and thinking I can, and thus be the better prepared for whatever may happen. “I sometimes try to think that it is only the strangeness of this strange man--if I may call him a man--that makes me feel a mystery in the air. It is hard to get hold of anything tangible in his bearing, so unobtrusively alert he is. There must be some explanation of the fact that a physician as skilful as he is should bury himself in these mountains--should hide himself from the different world to which he evidently belongs. “He is a gentleman,--I will do him the justice to admit that. He is a great deal besides any gentleman that I have ever seen before. Let me try to explain this to myself. Although he makes not the slightest show of attending to my wants, I know his every thought is upon me. He sleeps on the stone floor in front of the fireplace,--that is, if he sleeps at all, which I sometimes doubt. Even when he is not looking at me in that distant, abstracted way that he has, I feel that the whole cabin is filled with his eyes, and that they are always looking at me, day and night, but with an expression different from the veiled one of his own eyes. They do not have the distant, thoughtful, perfunctory, business-like expression of the eyes in his head, but a different one,--an expression that seems to be a mixture of duty, pity, kindness, patience, forbearance, and--it will make me feel better to write it--_contempt_. I feel that these countless eyes are reading my deepest thoughts, and looking over my shoulder as I write. “Of course I do not really feel all this, else I should not be writing thus. But I feel something. O God! when will this wretched strain be over?...