So the months rolled away, and the year drew near to its close. Doctor Remy had prosecuted his abstruse study, by the dim light of the science of that day, with characteristic energy and acuteness. He had slowly felt his way, from the premise that each faculty of the mind had its appropriate seat in the brain, to the conclusion that every local injury or disease would affect mainly the faculty corresponding to the injured or diseased portion, thereby not only indicating the seat of the impaired faculty, but suggesting the possibility of a local remedy for the local disturbance,--probably a delicate and difficult surgical operation, to remove pus, slivers of bone, or other foreign matter pressing upon, piercing, or otherwise irritating the sensitive cellular tissue of the brain. Now, he only longed for an opportunity to test his conclusions by experiment, and would certainly have attempted to use Carice for this purpose, except that on her slender thread of life hung his only chance of Bergan Hall. It would not do to sacrifice the immense future advantage to the small immediate gain. Nature, meanwhile, was laboring in her slow, gentle way, to effect the same end contemplated by the doctor's science. With the beginning of November, a change was observable in Carice. Her sweet face lost its look of happy anticipation, and grew weary and anxious. There were tokens that she was beginning to reason again, in a fitful, fragmentary way, and to notice some of the many discrepancies between the facts and the theories of her life; sometimes she put her hand to her head with a piteous expression of doubt and bewilderment. By and by, she became possessed of a spirit of restlessness by day, and of sleeplessness by night; making the care of her--hitherto an easy and a pleasant task--a sufficiently onerous charge. Thus it happened that she had made her escape to the Hall, as heretofore narrated. Her night had been restless, beyond all previous precedent, keeping Rosa constantly on the watch. Toward dawn, she had fallen into a light slumber, during which the weary attendant, sitting quietly by the bedside, had suddenly been overcome by a profound sleep. Waking ere long, and not wishing to disturb her tired maid, Carice stole softly to the window, to look out, as usual, for Bergan's coming, and saw the light shining again from the window of his room in the old Hall. The broken links in the chain of association were stirred, if not reunited,--perhaps a dim reminiscence of her former attempt to reach him woke within her,--she wrapped herself in the first shawl that came to hand, thrust her feet into a pair of slippers, and noiselessly made her way out of the house and down to the river, exactly as she had done a year before. At the gap in the foot-bridge, through which she had fallen, she stopped and put her hand to her brow, in a momentary perplexity. Here, her memory of the former expedition, which had led her thus far on her way, failed