Whence, but from an habitual defiance of danger, could my perseverance arise?
I have already assigned, as distinctly as I am able, the cause of it.

The frantic conception that my brother was within, that the resistance made to my design was exerted by him, had rooted itself in my mind.

You will comprehend the height of this infatuation, when I tell you, that, finding all my exertions vain, I betook myself to exclamations.

Surely I was utterly bereft of understanding.
Now had I arrived at the crisis of my fate.

"O! hinder not the door to open," I exclaimed, in a tone that had less of fear than of grief in it.