During these last days of my captivity, Mrs. Clayton was truly a piteous
sight to see--swathed in flannel and helpless as an infant, yet still
perversely vigilant as she had been in her hours of health, and
determined on the subject of opiates as before. I sometimes think she
feared to place herself wholly in my hands, as she must have been under
the influence of a powerful anodyne, and that, in spite of her
professions of confidence, and even affection, she feared me as her foe.
God knows that, had it been to save my own life, I would not have harmed
one hair of her viperish head, as flat on top as if the stone of the
Indian had been bound upon its crown from babyhood, yet full of brains
to bursting around the base of the skull.
It was necessary for Dinah to be in constant attendance on my Argus, and
even to feed her, so helpless were her hands, with the mucilages which
now formed her principal diet, by the order of some celebrated physician
who wrote his prescriptions without seeing his patient, after the form
of the ancients, sending them daily through the hands of Mrs. Raymond.
Still those vigilant green eyes never faltered in their task, and lying
where--with the door opened between our chambers (as she tyrannically
required it to be most of the time) she could command a view of almost
every act of my life--I found her scrutiny more unendurable than when
she had at least feigned to be absorbed with her stocking-basket.
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