But he warned me not to
encourage his talking, and especially not to ask him to explain. There
was nothing, he said, worse for a weak brain, than to set a strong will
to work it.
I tried to obey him, but it grew harder as the days went on. There were
not many of them, however; he recovered rapidly. When at length my uncle
talked not only to but with him, I regarded it as a virtual withdrawal of
his prohibition, and after that spoke to John of whatever came into his
or my head.
It was then he told me all he could remember since the moment he left me
with his supper in his hand. A great part of his recollection was the
vision of my uncle on the moor, and afterward in the park. We did not
know what to make of it. I should at once have concluded it caused by
prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and
myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing
enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to
concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor. I thought,
however, that excitement, fatigue, and lack of food, might have something
to do with it, and with his illness too; while, if he was in a state to
see anything phantasmal, what shape more likely to appear than that of my
uncle!
He would not hear of my mentioning the thing to my uncle. I would for my
own part have gone to him with it immediately; but could not with John's
prayer in my ears.
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