“Oh, yes, I am sure of it,” she said. “Why, though I do not know much about such things, yet it appears to me so reasonable that a malady concealed as yours was, should increase and strengthen, instead of subside, and that it should darken your mind, I am not at all surprised; and I believe that now, relieved by communication and sympathy, it will gradually leave you.” * * * * * This mood also changed in a few hours. As the moon waned he relapsed into the gloom and reserve of his habitual manner. By the vigilance of Sophie and Raymond, little Hagar had been kept carefully out of his sight for some days, and now when she came into his presence, in his abstraction he scarcely observed her. Sophie felt uneasy as the Sabbath approached. From the relaxed nerves of the lately overstrained brain, Sophie knew that he could not prepare a sermon, and knew not what excuse could be made, and wondered what had been his course in former emergencies of this kind. She knew _not_, that during the very fervor and exaltation of insanity he had prepared a sermon, which when delivered on the next Sabbath would electrify the whole congregation with its soul-thrilling eloquence. That sermon was the talk of the whole county for weeks. This, the reader knows, is not an uncommon feature in the exalted stages of mania. The “Song of David,” written during a fit of insanity by Christopher Smart, a poet of the last century, with a rusty nail on the walls of his cell in the madhouse, is one of the most elevated and sublime strains of sacred poetry I ever read. The first of September arrived. Raymond was gone, and the disbanded school of Sophie Churchill, or as we must now call her Mrs. Withers, re-assembled. It was continued for a few months until the end of the year, when Sophie found that she would have to give it up. In one respect a healthful change had passed over Mr. Withers. The violence of his periodical attacks of lunacy gradually subsided, but with this change grew another feature—an exclusive, absorbing, and constantly increasing affection for his gentle young wife. This, from his idiosyncrasy, became daily more jealous and exacting; he could not endure to have her out of his sight; he grew jealous, not only of the child who occupied a portion of her time, but of the very _business_ by which at least half their income was provided.