His physician suggested, as the only chance of arousing him, that Mrs.Unwin should be induced, if possible, to invite him to go out with her; with difficulty she was made to understand what they wanted her to do; at last she said that it was a fine morning, and she should like a walk.

Her partner at once rose and placed her arm in his.

Almost unconsciously, she had rescued him from the evil spirit for the last time.

The pair were in doleful plight.

When their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable manner under the influence of a man named Teedon, a schoolmaster crazed with self-conceit, at whom Cowper in his saner mood had laughed, but whom he now treated as a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of communication with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense which the charlatan talked.