“Come and stand beside me!” her mother went on with quivering lips. “If he shouldn’t know me I--I can’t stand it!” Rhoda took his wrist from her shaking hand, pressed firm fingers upon his pulse and threw her other arm with a little soothing caress around the elder woman’s shoulders. Suddenly the patient’s eyes flew open and with a bewildered stare looked up into Mrs. Ware’s pale and anxious face. “Jeff, dear boy, don’t you know me?” she begged. His blank, unrecognizing gaze rested upon her for a silent minute, then wandered on and fell upon her companion. “Speak to him, dear,” Mrs. Ware whispered brokenly. But there was no need. Slowly a puzzled expression crept into the vacuity, and that presently gave way to one of recognition, and then the hearts of the two women were stirred to their depths by the glad wonder that illumined his countenance. Never would Rhoda be able to forget that look, like the sudden happiness over-spreading the face of a child at unexpected sight of a loved one, which her presence had inspired--her presence, which had brought back his sense, trembling upon the verge of that unknown black gulf, into the world of light and reason. “Rhoda!” he said feebly, and then, smiling, closed his eyes again. “Stay here beside him,” Mrs. Ware whispered, “while I go and see if your father has returned. Oh, honey! I think it’s going to be all right!” When she came back with Dr. Ware, half an hour later, she slipped quietly into the room a few steps ahead of her husband and found Rhoda telling her patient what had happened, while he listened, with her hand clasped in his. Her motherly heart gave a quick throb. “It has brought Rhoda to her senses too, at last!” was her quick inference. But a moment later doubts disturbed her certainty as she saw the unconcern with which the girl withdrew her hand and made way for her father. Dr. Ware was well pleased with the young man’s condition. “You’ll have to stay in bed a few days, perhaps a week,” was his decision, “while your broken rib is knitting itself together again. You’ve got a pretty good case of nervous shock also, as the result of that blow on your head--and you can thank God, Mr. Delavan, that it’s nothing worse than shock. But a few days of quiet will make that all right too.” There was no perturbation in the physician’s mind, at first, over the presence of Jefferson Delavan in his house, invested though the young man was with the romantic interest of his narrow escape from death. He felt sure of his daughter now and did not believe there was any danger of her marrying the southerner. She had thrown herself unreservedly into sympathy with the anti-slavery cause and she was working with him enthusiastically and efficiently in making of their house a “station” on the Underground Railroad.