While they watched by the bed-side of the unfortunate man, Mrs. Pratt grew communicative, and told the doctor how this sad young man came to her one hot Saturday evening and asked her for lodgings--how she had thought him "sort o' nice" and "took to him" and had had him now for near a twelve-month--that he had paid "reglar" and gave no trouble until the night the fever "struck him down"--his name was Bencroft, she knew, and his linen was well marked with a N. an' a B. in "real good writin"--and finally, how she hoped he'd soon get better, for his own sake and other peoples, "so she did." When they looked at the sleeper again, he was peaceful and unoppressed, his breathing was feebler and less labored, and while they stood whispering at the foot of his bed, he gave a great sigh and opened his heavy lids languidly. The doctor hastened to his side: the wild delirium had passed away, leaving the worried face of the sufferer calmer and quieter, he opened up his large lustrous eyes and said in a plaintive tone.-- "Thirsty--so thirsty!" Mrs. Pratt raised the glass to his parched lips, and clutching her hands in his own feverish grasp, he pressed the goblet to his mouth and drank a devouring draught. It was true that his wanderings and delirium had ceased. Mrs. Pratt looked meaningly at the doctor and whispered hopefully: "he is better?" but, professional-like, the doctor remained silent, and only looked very seriously on. The invalid dropped back again among his pillows, and fell into a deep sleep. The night was now well nigh spent: outside in the leaden dawn, an odd, faint, sleepy twitter disturbed the silence, and an odd pedestrian's footsteps echoed, through the still street. When this natural sleep stole over the weak and wornout invalid, the doctor bade Mrs. Pratt a "good morning" for a while, telling her she might expect him back in four or five hour's time. "If your patient should wake," he added, "question him a little to ascertain whether he is entirely free from the illusions of his delirium or not--" and then with a puzzled wondering look upon his handsome face, the young doctor passed out of Mrs. Pratt's close, shabby house into the deserted street. Thoughts and memories of the past, he had stowed so resignedly away, flooded his mind as he strode onward, he had dreamed until last night that the ghost of his by-gone days would haunt him no more, and when he had learned to live without his memories on the associations of the frequent past, he was brought forward again to meet, face to face, a forcible reminder of his yesterdays. "Poor Nicholas!" he soliloquized, "what can have befallen him, that this should be his end? I thought there was nothing left in life that could surprise me, and yet here is something that really does."