Come, take the pen, I'll guide your hand.' The pen was fixed in her hand, and the first words formed.

They looked such sprawling skeletons that Clotilde had the comfort of feeling sure they would be discerned as the work of compulsion.

So she wrote on mechanically, solacing herself for what she did with vows of future revolt.

Alvan had a saying, that want of courage is want of sense; and she remembered his illustration of how sense would nourish courage by scattering the fear of death, if we would only grasp the thought that we sink to oblivion gladly at night, and, most of us, quit it reluctantly in the morning.

She shut her eyes while writing; she fancied death would be welcome; and as she certainly had sense, she took it for the promise of courage.