CHAPTER LVII. A NIGHTMARE DREAM. "Once all was sunshine and brightness, Life had no sorrow or care; Love filled my soul with its brightness, As flowers perfume the air. Where now is Pleasure, the beauty? Where now is Hope's cheering beam? Where are those friends once all duty? All vanished, all gone, like a dream!" We must follow the fortunes of Geraldine after being placed in the sleigh by her cowardly abductor. Tucking the sleeping girl warmly under the heavy robes, he took the reins from the man he had employed to hold them, and drove off at a spanking pace for his destination, the old country-house of which Miss Erroll had told the detective. As the night was propitious to his purpose, and the road remarkably fine, he reached the place in a short while, and without any misadventure. The old woman, Jane Crabtree, in expectation of his coming, had muzzled the savage bull-dog, and came down the lane to the gate to meet him, as they had agreed upon. The woman was a giant in stature, as the detective had said, and looked strong enough to floor John L. Sullivan with one hand. In the light of the bull's-eye lantern that Standish flared into her eyes, her coarse face, with its straggling black locks blown about by the swirling snow, looked capable of committing any evil deed. He dropped some twenty-dollar gold pieces into her hand, gave her some instructions, and drove his team toward the city. A few hours later he boarded a train for Cincinnati at daylight, and remained away five days, in order to throw the searchers for Geraldine off guard. But as we have seen, the forged note, representing that she had gone of her own free will to marry her betrothed, had effectually prevented any hue and cry over Geraldine's disappearance. So the villainous abductor had it all his own way, and for two long weeks, until Hawthorne's return, he was free to come and go as he chose in the prosecution of his designs against the poor girl. As for the poor victim, who can judge of her surprise and terror on awaking the next morning from her drugged sleep, in a strange room, and guarded by an old giant of a woman, with the most villainous face she had ever beheld. The night before she had fallen asleep in her own lovely, luxurious room, and the last sight her eyes had rested on was the handsome, smiling face of Miss Erroll, the governess. But her sleep had been haunted by terrible nightmare dreams, and when she waked at last in that shabby room in the presence of her horrible old jailer, she thought that she was dreaming still. Recoiling from the woman, she threw out her arms, groaning helplessly: "Oh, those dreadful nightmare dreams! How they haunt me! Will not some one wake me, please? Martha, where are you? Come to me at once. Oh, Cissy! oh, mamma!" Old Jane Crabtree came and stood over her scowlingly, snapping out: "You an't dreamin', gal; you is wide awake!"