As I sat looking at the face of the half-lifeless being, and musing a little on the supposed nature of her complaint, previously to an inquiry at her mother for the particulars of her case, I saw rise, on a sudden, and as if by the power of some heart-born impulse, a feeling throughout all the fine, attenuated muscles, that changed the angelic quietness of her countenance into the shrinking and contorted motions of a pain that seemed to bring despair on its wings, as a colleague to strike as soon as its own pang was inflicted. I could see, also, that there was mixed with the expression of pain an indication of terror, as if the poor victim apprehended some onset of the enemy that had already laid her so low, similar to what she had been already in the habit of experiencing. In an instant it came: the whole chest, throat, and face were grasped by a convulsive spasm, and a cough, shrill and piercing, as if the breath passed with difficulty through the windpipe, accompanied by the long drawback of apparent croop, that sounded like the yell of a strangling dog, struck our ears, and produced a feeling of consternation among those who were as yet better acquainted with her extraordinary case than I was. I had never experienced anything of the same kind; for the symptoms that separated her complaint, whatever it was, from the most painful diseases of the windpipe known to us, were at first sight apparent. The sound prevented me from getting intelligence from her mother, who was, besides, under such alarm and anxiety, that she paid little attention to those around her. The rattling of the coach was a great aggravation of the attack; and the noise of a grating wheel, not unlike that wrung from the poor victim, mixed with it, and rendered the scene frightful. After lasting about ten minutes, the harrowing symptoms stopped suddenly; in a few minutes, I saw again before me the same placid countenance, with the closed eyelids, and the same lifeless appearance I had witnessed before the attack came on.