There is a moment, we are told by those who have ascended in a balloon, when the cord is cut, and the solid earth is seen to begin to drift below, the trees to dance, and the towers to slide away, that an all but over-powering sense of fear and inclination comes on one to leap from the car at the risk of being dashed to pieces. It is said that the panic produced by an earthquake exceeds every other terror. When a ship is storm-tossed, escape is possible in a boat, when a house is on fire there are feather-beds into which we can leap; but when the earth is insecure, then we have nowhere to which we can flee, nothing to which we can look. With Captain Saltren, his religious convictions were what was most stable. Everything else glided before him as a dream, but he kept his feet on those things that belonged to the spiritual world, as if they were adamantine foundations. And now he was being, like an aeronaut, caught away, and these shifted under his eyes; like one in an earthquake, he felt the strong bases rock beneath him. The sense of terror that passed over him was akin to despair; but the last cord was not snapped, and that was the firmest of all—his visions and revelations. “Of all queer folks,” said Mrs. Kite, “I reckon you are the queerest, captain. I thought so from the time I first saw you come and pray on your raft in the pond, and when I heard what a tale you had made out of Miss Arminell throwing a book at you, then I did begin to believe you were not right in your mind; now I’m sure of it.” Captain Saltren looked dreamily at her; but in that dreamy look was pain. “That was, to be sure, a wonderful tale,” pursued Mrs. Kite, losing patience with him. “An angel from Heaven cast the Everlasting Gospel down to you, was that it?” He nodded, but said nothing. “And I see’d Miss Arminell do it.” His eyes opened wide with alarm. “What the name of the book was, I do not mind; indeed, I do not know, because I cannot read; but I have got the book, and can show it you, and you who are a scholar can read it through from the first word to the last.” “You have the book?” “I have; when it fell it went under your raft, but it did not sink, it came up after on the other side, and when you were gone I fished it out, and I have it now.” “It was red as blood.” “Aye, and the paint came off on my fingers, but I dried it in the sun; and I have the book now, not in the Owl’s Nest, but in a cupboard of the back kitchen o’ my old house.” “His likeness was on it.” “That I can’t say. There is a head of a man.” “The head of Lord Lamerton.” “It don’t look like it; the man has black hair and a beard, and his lordship had no beard, and his hair was light brown.” A shudder came over the captain. Was his last, his firmest anchor to break? Again, as he had done several times already, he passed his hands over his arms and shoulders and sides, as if peeling off what adhered to him. “Let me see the book,” he said faintly. “Lead on.”