In my loneness, I felt that the vulgar belief in the devil, in ghosts, and goblins damned, would be a solace. They would be something, and any thing is better than nothing. Better is a living dog than a dead lion. Alas, I had sold myself, and my redemption was far off. Strange enough, I felt something like passion revive in my guilty breast. I felt, I even regretted Priscilla’s absence; and it seemed that she was dear to me, and that I could not endure life without her. I pictured her to myself as I had first known her, and I wept as I remembered how for long years I had enslaved her. A voice whispered in my heart, emancipate her. A momentary feeling of generosity possessed me. I summoned her, as I knew how, to my presence. She appeared, instantaneously. “Priscilla,” said I, “I am sad and weary. Life has lost its charms for me, and I care not how soon I die. I have nothing to live for. You are a wife and a mother. I absolve you from your pact; be free; return, and devote yourself to your husband, who is worthy of you, and to your boy. I have, and will no longer have, power over you.” A gleam of joy spread over her face, a smile of gratitude played on her lips, and a look of love shot from her eyes, and the place where she stood was vacant. She had vanished; but a chattering, as of a thousand mocking voices, filled my room, and then impish, mocking faces were seen all around, making mouths at me. I cared not for these. I silenced the former, and sent away the latter with a word. I retained my magic force still. But there was joy as well as sorrow in that house in Arch street, Philadelphia. Priscilla, the day of returning to her own house, had been taken ill; her husband was alarmed, and called a physician, who could understand nothing of her case. She grew worse and worse; and during the time I had summoned her to me, she fell into a sort of stupor, a complete trance, and to all except her husband, who had seen her in that state before, and knew that she was subject to trances, she seemed to be dead. The moment I had absolved her, she came to herself, a sweet smile on her face, with the hue of perfect health. She arose in bed, embraced her husband with a warmth and sincerity of affection which he had never before known, and for the first time since his birth looked upon her boy with the glad joy of a mother’s heart. But at this moment her husband was more to her than her babe. She hung on his neck, she pressed him to her heart, she half-smothered him with kisses, spoke in the terms and tones of the tenderest and sweetest affection, and it seemed as if she would pour out upon him, in a single moment, the loaded affections of a lifetime. “My dear husband, you must forget and forgive the past. I am yours, yours now, yours alone; heart, soul, and body, forever. The spell is broken. The delusion is gone; take me, take me, dear James, to your heart.”