Before him, even under the best circumstances, what had he to look for, even if he were free? The world had nothing in it for him but that wife's burying-place, a house where her dear living picture should be, and was not, and a hearth of desolation for himself! Why had he pleaded so earnestly for liberty?--the liberty that had nothing to offer him even when obtained? Those two beings gone, why should he alone wish to remain? A bed of earth was, after all, the best place for him. And yet--for the rebound of the spirits is often in proportion to their fall--it was possible, were he free, that he might find his daughter again. The doctor might be compelled to tell him how she had been disposed of in the first instance, and he might be able to trace her out. Occurrences less probable had come to pass before, and why not in this case also? He might find her, and in her--though grown a woman, whom he should not perhaps know again--one who would yet be like her mother Frances over again, a pride and joy to his house, and a consolation in the last years of his existence. But the vision faded when again and again the withering and insurmountable question recurred to him,--how could he get free? In the most direct course, the events of that evening had cut off all hope; in any other there lay none. It was true that visitors sometimes came to inspect the house, and mark the treatment of the patients. To tell them his tale, and ask their aid, was useless. Such had been before, and he had told them; but nobody believed him: they only looked on with wonder or fear, and went away pitying the painful nature of his delusions. Could he escape? He had, years ago, planned every conceivable mode of escape,--he had tried them, and had failed. He must remain there--it was his doom: he must still hear, as he had heard until he cared little for it, the solemn deadness of the night disturbed with shrieks that no sane mortal could have uttered; the untimely dancings of witless men, without joy in them; the bursts of horrid laughter from women's lips, without mirth; the singings of merry words, with a direful vivacity that filled the veins with a creeping terror more fearful than that of curses; and sometimes plaintive notes from the love-lost, whose eyes were sleepless, which might have made the heart burst with pity! He must still live amidst all this, and still shrink (as he did sometimes) into the closest corner of his pallet, and bless himself in the iron security of his cell, (which by daylight he abhorred,) from very dread of those imaginary horrors which the wild people about the building conjured up in the depth of Nature's sleeping-time.