Gentleman Geff was in a profound stupor when he was taken to the rectory and put to bed in the best chamber of the house—the parlor bedroom on the ground floor. He continued in this state for several days, faithfully watched by Elspeth and Longman, and frequently visited by Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and daily attended by Dr. Hobbs. Jennie shrank from even going to look at him. But he recognized no one, noticed nothing. Medicine and highly concentrated nourishment were regularly administered to him by his nurses. These he sometimes swallowed instinctively, mechanically, and at other times choked over, and had to be raised in bed and have his throat relieved and his mouth wiped like a helpless baby; but all unconsciously on his part. He never knew, or seemed to know, what he himself was suffering, or other people were doing. His spirit was away, away. Where? In Hades, most probably, judging from his antecedents. “Will he die in this stupor, or come out of it, do you think, sir?” inquired the rector of the doctor one morning as the two men stood by the bedside of the patient. Dr. Hobbs never “shook his head;” doctors never do such stupidly disheartening things over a case, however serious—story writers to the contrary notwithstanding. This physician also had the courage to confess that he was not omniscient, for he answered: “I do not know.” “But if he should come out of this stupor, will he be likely to live?” inquired the rector. “I do not know,” again replied the doctor. “I shall be better able to judge when he recovers consciousness, if he should ever recover it.” And the physician wrote his prescriptions and instructions for the treatment of the ill man and retired. Not one word of this talk entered the consciousness of Gentleman Geff. Nine days he lay in this condition, and then there passed over him a change. He seemed to himself to be groping feebly out of nothingness into vague consciousness of horror; but what the horror was, or what he himself was, he did not even think. The first effort to do so sent him back into the state from which he had come. After a few hours he came again out of utter oblivion into some faint consciousness of himself. But who was he? Where was he? All was dark and still around him. Then came faint intelligence, with imperfect memory, which mingled dreams with distorted facts. He remembered faintly what he would have called “a row,” but where, or under what circumstances, he could not find; he thought it was a drunken brawl over cards in a gambling saloon, and some one had crushed in his brain and killed him. Yes, that was it! He had been killed last night in a drunken brawl over cards, in a gambling saloon, and now he had come to life—— Where?