Catharine's first impulse was to go home instantly and vindicate Tom, but she did not move, and the letter remained unanswered. What could she say to her own parents which would meet the case or would be worthy of such a conspiracy? She would not be believed, and no good would be done. A stronger reason for not speaking was a certain pride and a determination to retaliate by silence, but the strongest of all reasons was a kind of collapse after she arrived at Chapel Farm, and the disappearance of all desire to fight. Her old cheerfulness began to depart, and a cloud to creep over her like the shadow of an eclipse. Young as she was, strange thoughts possessed her. The interval between the present moment and death appeared annihilated; life was a mere span; a day would go by and then a week, and in a few months, which could easily be counted, would come the end; nay, it was already out there, visible, approaching, and when she came to think what death really meant, the difference between right and wrong was worth nothing. Terrors, vague and misty possessed her, all the worse because they were not substantial. She could not put into words what ailed her, and she wrestled with shapeless clinging forms which she could hardly discern, and could not distangle from her, much less overthrow. They wound themselves about her, and although they were but shadows, they made her shriek, and at times she fainted under their grasp, and thought she could not survive. She had no peace. If soldiers lie dead upon a battle-field there is an end of them; new armies may be raised, but the enemy is at any rate weaker by those who are killed. It is not quite the same with our ghostly foes, for they rise into life after we think they are buried, and often with greater strength than ever. There is something awful in the obstinacy of the assaults upon us. Day after day, night after night, and perhaps year after year, the wretched citadel is environed, and the pressure of the attack is unremitting, while the force which resists has to be summoned by a direct effort of the will, and the moment that effort relaxes the force fails, and the besiegers swarm upon the fortifications. That which makes for our destruction, everything that is horrible, seems spontaneously active, and the opposition is an everlasting struggle.