CHAPTER III

The next thing I remember is waking up with the feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare,

and seeing before me a terrible red glare crossed with thick black bars.

I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind

or water, agitation, uncertainty, and an all- predominating sense of terror confused my

faculties.

Air long I became aware that someone was handling me, lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting

posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before.

I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.

In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved.

I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire.

It was night.

A candle burnt on the table.

Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair

near my pillow leaning over me.

I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security.

And I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead,

and not related to Mrs. Reed.

Turning from Bessie, though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbott,

for instance, would have been, I scrutinized the face of the gentleman.

I knew him.

It was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were

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