It was "MAD MONKTON."
BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
MAD MONKTON
CHAPTER I.
THE Monktons of Wincot Abbey bore a sad character for want of
sociability in our county. They never went to other people's
houses, and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter
living near them, never received anybody under their own roof.
Proud as they all certainly were, it was not pride, but dread,
which kept them thus apart from their neighbors. The family had
suffered for generations past from the horrible affliction of
hereditary insanity, and the members of it shrank from exposing
their calamity to others, as they must have exposed it if they
had mingled with the busy little world around them. There is a
frightful story of a crime committed in past times by two of the
Monktons, near relatives, from which the first appearance of the
insanity was always supposed to date, but it is needless for me
to shock any one by repeating it. It is enough to say that at
intervals almost every form of madness appeared in the family,
monomania being the most frequent manifestation of the affliction
among them. I have these particulars, and one or two yet to be
related, from my father.
At the period of my youth but three of the Monktons were left at
the Abbey--Mr.
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