They told me in low whispers, that the floor of the old house in which my father died, was stained with his own blood, shed by his own hand in raging madness.

I drove my fingers into my ears, but they screamed into my head till the room rang with it, that in one generation before him the madness slumbered, but that his grandfather had lived for years with his hands fettered to the ground, to prevent his tearing himself to pieces.

I knew they told the truth--I knew it well.

I had found it out years before, though they had tried to keep it from me.

Ha! ha! I was too cunning for them, madman as they thought me.
'At last it came upon me, and I wondered how I could ever have feared it.