Before daybreak the maniac succeeded in setting herself free; but the paroxysm of the fit had meanwhile passed over; and when she visited me next morning at the place where I was hewing--a little apart from the other workmen, who were all engaged in building on the walls--save for the strongly-marked features, I would scarce have recognised her. She was neatly dressed, though her gown was neither fine nor new; her clean white cap was nicely arranged; and her air seemed to be rather that of the respectable tradesman's wife or daughter, than of the ordinary country woman. For some little time she stood beside me without speaking, and then somewhat abruptly asked,--"What makes _you_ work as a mason?" I made some commonplace reply; but it failed to satisfy her. "All your fellows are real masons," she said; "but you are merely in the disguise of a mason; and I have come to consult you about the deep matters of the soul." The matters she had come to inquire regarding were really very deep indeed; she had, I found, carefully read Flavel's "Treatise on the Soul of Man"--a volume which, fortunately for my credit, I also had perused; and we were soon deep together in the rather bad metaphysics promulgated on the subject by the Schoolmen, and republished by the divine. It seemed clear, she said, that every human soul was created--not transmitted--created, mayhap, at the time when it began to be; but if so, how, or on what principle did it come under the influence of the Fall? I merely remarked, in reply, that she was of course acquainted with the views of the old theologians--_such as Flavel_--men who really knew as much about such things as could be known, and perhaps a little more: was she not satisfied with them? Not dissatisfied, she said; but she wanted more light. Could a soul not derived from our first parents be rendered vile simply by being put into a body derived from them? One of the passages in Flavel, on this special point, had luckily struck me, from its odd obscurity of expression, and I was able to quote it in nearly the original words. You know, I remarked, that a great authority on the question "declined confidently to affirm that the moral infection came by way of physical agency, as a rusty scabbard infects and defiles a bright sword when sheathed therein: it might be," he thought, "by way of natural concomitancy, as Estius will have it; or, to speak as Dr. Reynolds doth, by way of ineffable resultancy and emanation." As this was perfectly unintelligible, it seemed to satisfy my new friend. I added, however, that, like herself, I was waiting for more light on the difficulty, and might set myself to it in right earnest, when I found it fully demonstrated that the Creator could not, or did not, make man equally the descendant in soul as in body of the original progenitors of the race. I believed, with the great Mr. Locke, that he could do it; nor was I aware he had anywhere said that what he could do in the matter he had not done.