"Why, Mr. Morton, don't you know you are wet through and through?" "Am I?" and I looked down at my soaked garments. "I don't believe you have a dry thread on you." "I've been too excited to think of it. Of course, I got wet on the roof; but what's a summer shower! Your coffee's getting cold." "So is yours." "You have the doctor's orders." "I would be glad if my wishes weighed a little with you," she said, appealingly. "There, Miss Warren, if you put it that way I'd drink gall and vinegar," and I gulped down the coffee. She vanished into Adah's room, saying, "You must take my word for it that I drink mine. I shall sip it while waiting on my patient." Having insisted on Reuben's taking some also, I returned to the kitchen and made a new supply. Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb's extreme prostration, both mental and physical, perplexed me. Their idolized child was still unconscious, and yet they could only look on in wondering and perplexed anxiety. I afterward learned that a partial paralysis of every faculty, especially of memory, was a common effect of a severe shock of electricity. It was now evident that Miss Warren, from some obscure cause, escaped harm from lightning. The words I had employed to reassure her turned out to be true--she had merely swooned--and thus, on recovery, had full possession of all her faculties. "I would be glad if my wishes weighed a little with you," she had said. In wonder at myself, I asked, "What weighs more with me? By what right is this maiden, whom I have met but to-day, taking such absolute control of my being? Am I overwrought, morbid, fanciful, deluded by an excited imagination into beliefs and moods that will vanish in the clear sunlight and clearer light of reason? or has the vivid lightning revealed with absolute distinctness the woman on whom I can lean in perfect trust, and yet must often sustain in her pathetic weakness? The world would say we are strangers; but my heart and soul and every fibre of my being appear to recognize a kinship so close that I feel we never can be strangers again. It is true the lightning fuses the hardest substances, making them one; however, I am beginning to think that my hitherto callous nature has been smitten by a diviner fire. If so, Heaven grant that I'm not the only one struck. "Well, it's a queer world. When I broke down, last Friday night, and sat cowering before the future in my editorial sanctum, I little dreamed that on Sunday night I should be making coffee in a good old Quaker's kitchen, and, what is still more strange, making a divinity out of a New York music-teacher!" A moment later I added, "That's a stupid way of putting it. I'm not making a divinity out of her at all. She is one, and I've had the wit to recognize the truth. Are her gentlemen friends all idiots that they have not--" "What! talking to yourself, Mr. Morton? I fear the events of this day are turning your head." And Miss Warren entered.