The volume to which she was alluding lay open on top of the crate. Placing it upon my lap, I quickly perused the text and immediately recognized the work as Joseph Glanvill’s celebrated Treatise on the Will. One particular passage, which had been underscored in pencil, caught my eye: “And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

Raising my eyes from the book, I inquired: “I am curious as to the exact signification of a comment you rendered a moment ago—namely, that what you denominate as your ‘work’ is almost, but not quite, completed.”

“That is correct,” she replied. “There is one remaining person on whom I have vowed to exact a bloody, if richly merited, revenge.”

A sudden chill coursed through my frame at this assertion. “And whom do you mean?” I asked, my voice quaking slightly with premonitory dread.

“Why his sister, Maria, of course,” answered Lenore. “The same unpitying being who so cruelly rebuffed my poor father in his hour of crisis.”

“Villainess!” I cried as I sprang to my feet, sending Glanvill’s treatise flying from my lap and onto the stone floor. “Never shall I permit you to work evil on that sainted woman. You are mad!”

“What you call evil, I call justice,” said she. “And nothing will stop me from administering it. Certainly,” she added, her upper lip curled into a sneer of the purest disdain, “not you, dear brother!”

Drawing myself up to my full height, I declared: “You err in your judgment. Though loath to employ physical violence against a member of the gentler sex, I shall use every means at my disposal—not excluding brute force—to prevent your insane, your nefarious design!”

A burst of maniacal laughter emanated from her throat as she exclaimed: “We shall see who has misjudged!” And so saying, she launched herself in my direction.

In regard to such considerations as martial prowess, physical agility, and sheer muscular strength, the advantages I enjoyed over my maddened attacker were nothing less than extreme. Even today, there is no question in my mind that—under ordinary conditions—I could have subdued her with the greatest of ease.