Here we are, my mother and I, sitting in the little parlour. My mother has been crying over me, and perhaps over the sad future that lies before us. Not a sound now is to be heard. My condition is a strange one. Everything about me is very unreal, and I wonderingly consider if I shall ever wake up. All my young experiences come to me again. I see my grandmother and myself sitting together. There upon the mantelshelf is the figure of the smoke-dried monkey of a man in stone, wagging his head at me; there is the man with the knob on the top of his head--what is his name? Anthony--yes, Anthony Bullpit--making a meal off his finger nails. In marches my grandmother's long stocking, bulged out with money to the shape of a very substantial leg, just as I had fancied it--that makes me laugh; but my flesh creeps as I hear Jane Painter's voice in the dark, telling of blood and murder. The last word, as she dwells upon it, brings up my baby-brother, and I hear the Dutch clock tick: 'I know! I know!' But it ticks all these fancies into oblivion, and ticks in the picture of the churchyard. I see the graves and the tombstones, and I read the inscription: 'Here Lieth our Beloved Daughter.' How it must grieve her parents to know that their beloved daughter is lying shut up in the cold earth! I raise a portrait of the child, with fair hair and laughing eyes, and I wonder how she would look now if she were dug up, and whether her parents would know her again. Night surprises me confined within the triangular wall of the churchyard. The gates are closed, and I cannot pass out. The moon shines down icily. The cold air makes my fevered blood hotter. I _must_ get out! I cannot stop confined here for ever! I dig my fingers into the wall; desperately I cling to it, and strive to climb. Inch by inch I mount. With an exquisite sense of relief I reach the top, but as I place my hands upon it they are cut to the bone by the broken glass, and with a wild shudder I sink into darkness and oblivion! CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH A GREAT CHANGE IN MY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKES PLACE. When I recovered from the fever of which the experiences just recorded were the prelude, I found that we had removed from the house in which I was born, and that we were occupying apartments. We had removed also from the neighbourhood; the streets were strange, the people were strange; I saw no familiar faces. Hitherto we had been living in Hertford, and many a time had I watched the barges going lazily to and fro on the River Lea. The place we were in now was nothing but a village; my mother told me it was called Chipping Barnet. I cannot tell exactly what it was that restrained me from asking why the change had been made; it must have been from an intuitive consciousness that the subject was painful to my mother. But when, after the lapse of a year or so, we moved away from Chipping Barnet, and began to live in very humble fashion in two small rooms, I asked the reason.