"'Ah!' she surprised me by saying, as a smile of congratulation lighted her face, 'then you are alive this morning, dear, and have your handsome eyes wide open.' "This in my opinion was a singularly strange and inappropriate address; but I made no attempt to respond to it, for I knew that I was dead. and that the dead do not speak. "'Why, dear heart,' resumed the nurse, kneeling by my side and kissing me, 'can't you find your tongue? I know by your eyes that you know me; the glassy stare has left them. Come, do say a word, and say you are better.' "Then a suspicion flashed across my brain, and raising my right hand slightly, I pointed to the bed of No. 22, and asked, 'How is she?--how is she?' "'Don't frighten yourself, dear,' answered the nurse, 'she isn't there. She has been moved. She doesn't have that bed my longer!' "'Then it is _she_ who is dead, nurse; and all the rest was a dream? It is she who is dead?' "'Hush, hush, dear! she has gone to rest--' "Yes! it was all clear to me. Not I but my unfortunate companion had died; and in my delirious fancy I had regarded the friends who came to see her, and convey her to the grave, as my sister Martha and her little daughter Rhoda. I did not impart to the nurse the delusion of which I had been the victim; for, as is often the case with the sick, I was sensitive with regard to the extreme mental sickness into which I had fallen, and the vagaries of my reason. So I kept my secret to the best of my power; and having recognised how much better I was, how the fever had quitted my veins and the weight had left my head, I thanked God in my heart for all his mercies, and once more cherished a hope that he might see fit to restore me to health.