The long sweet sleep wonderfully strengthens me. When I awake, I at once raise my head, rest myself upon my elbow, and stare with surprise at the brown furrowed face, the blue eyes, the great hooked nose, and the long gray moustache of Sergeant Süssmilch, who sits at my bed-side. The old man, on his part, looks at me with no less surprise. Then a pleasant smile shoots from the moustache through a pair of the deepest furrows up to the blue eyes, where it stays and blinks and twinkles joyously. He brings three fingers of his right hand to his forehead, and says, "_Serviteur!_" This comes so drolly from him that I have to laugh, for I can laugh now, and the old fellow laughs too, and says, "Had a good nap?" "Splendid," I answer. "Have I been sleeping long?" "Pretty well. To-morrow it will be eight weeks," he replies cheerily. "Eight weeks," I repeated, mechanically; "that is a long time;" and thinking of this, I pass my hand over my head. My head was naturally covered with very thick, curly, soft auburn hair, inclining to red; but I now feel nothing but short bristles, as of a brush, a brush too in which time has made considerable ravages. "This is very strange," I said. "Soon grow," said the sergeant, encouragingly. "Shaved me bald as a turnip after this"--he pointed to a deep scar on his right temple, running up into his thick gray hair, and which I now noticed for the first time--"and yet I had a crop afterwards like a bear----" "With seven senses," I added, and had to laugh at my own wit. It seems that I have a child's head on my broad shoulders. The old man laughed heartily, then suddenly grew serious and said: "Now keep still, and go to sleep again like a----" He did not finish his favorite simile, apparently in fear lest he should set me to laughing again; but I laughed in spite of his precautions, and while doing so pulled up the sleeve of my shirt, which struck me as singularly loose. But it was not that the sleeve was wider, but my arm thinner; so thin that I could scarcely believe it to be mine. "Soon get strong again," said the sergeant. "I have been very sick, then?" "Well," said he, "it was very near tattoo; but I always said: weeds won't die," and he rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "Talk enough now," he added, in a tone of authority. "Strict orders, when awake, to allow no discussion, and report fact; which shall be done forthwith." The sergeant is about rising, but I take one of his brown hands and beg him to stay. I feel myself quite strong, I say; speaking does not fatigue me at all, and of course hearing does not; and I should like to hear how I came into this condition, who the persons are that have been about me, and whose faces I have seen floating through the mist of my dreams; and if there has not been a great good-natured mastiff that guarded me, and had a way of growling deeply.