When Mr. Lupton arose from his reverie, and strode across the room, his foot struck against the bullet that had been discharged from Jerry Clink's pistol. He looked up to the wall; and, though the blow which at the critical moment Colin had struck diverted it from himself, the squire saw, with a strange sensation, for which he could not account, that it had passed through the canvass, and near the bosom of his wife's picture. CHAPTER IX. _Gives a description of Fanny's visit to the madhouse, and of her interview with her father._ After the lapse of some few days, during which Mr. Lupton left the hall on his proposed brief journey,--(though not without first sending a messenger to Whinmoor with a small packet for Colin, which the latter found to contain fifteen guineas, and a repetition of the invitation to appear again at Kiddal on the day previously named,)--Fanny's arrangements for going over Doctor Rowel's establishment were completed; and according to appointment she set out one morning, early after breakfast, and reached Nabbfield about ten o'clock. As she approached the place her heart began to throb violently, and her hands to tremble as she placed them on her bosom, as if by that action to still the poor troubled thing within. She gazed at the building as though every single stone was a separate source of fear to her; at its melancholy windows as so many eyes, out of which madness and pain looked upon the pleasant world below. As she passed along the footpath outside the boundary wall she stopped, and listened. Instead of sounds of woe, which she expected to hear from within, the blackbird and the linnet in the plantations sounded their pleasant notes there the same as elsewhere. The great and gaudy dragon-fly darted along the sunny wall, and little clouds of gnats flew in innumerable and ever-changing evolutions beneath the pendent branches of the young elms and sycamores by the roadside. When she saw the gateway she first lingered, and then stopped, to gather breath and resolution. She could not: she looked again, and then retraced her steps some yards, hoping to quiet herself, and grow more calm. She looked up at the sky: it was bright, and vast, and deep, with an intense blue, that seemed as unfathomable as eternity. She thought of her father, and then of another Father who alone could help her and sustain her in all trials. Fanny sunk down upon the bank, and clasped her hands together in silent and spontaneous prayer for assistance to meet the coming trial. She arose strengthened, calm, and assured.