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38 The cook came in and together they ransacked my trunks and boxes, coolly appropriating my jewels and other articles they took a fancy to.

Imagine my feelings? Within a few feet, yet unable to prevent them.

The coffin came, I was placed in it.

They screwed the lid down.

I had no idea of time; every minute seemed a year of hideous, appalling agony.

Presently, they carried me to the hearse and put me in.

Supposing they had not been able to purchase a vault, and buried me in the ground?

How awful, if this was death, to be in the ground for eternity, and know it!

And yet, how much more horrible if I was still alive and should wake, to die that death, one of the most awful the human mind can conceive!

Again mid again I pictured to myself what I should pass through, enclosed within these narrow hoards.

How powerfully, with what concentrated efforts of my brain, I willed my limbs to move, but to no purpose!

Only my brain was alive, and in it I suffered more than the agonies of the damned.

Oh! Why had I not the power to kill my brain, and thus escape this uncertainty?