caresses and outcries of joy and thankfulness. But Dr. Rider quieted the poor mother with a touch of his hand. "Let them alone," he said, with that authority which no one in a sick-room can resist. Mrs. Vincent kept back with unspeakable pangs in her heart, and watched the waking up of that paralysed life which, alike in its loss and its recovery, had been swept apart from her into another world. Without any help from her mother, without even recognising her mother or distinguishing her from the strangers round, Susan's soul awoke. She raised herself more and more among those pillows where a little while ago she lay so passively--she opened her eyes fully and looked round upon the man by her bedside, and the other indistinct figures in the room, with a look of resistance and conscious strength. "We will protect each other," said Susan, slowly, "nobody shall harm her--we will keep each other safe." Then, after another interval, other instincts awoke in the reviving soul. She cast a wistful look from one to another, always drawing her faint white arm round the girl who clung to her and found security in her clasp. "Hush, hush! there are women here," she said in a whisper, and with a tone of strange confusion, light breaking through the darkness. Then there followed a long pause. Dr. Rider stood by the bedside holding up his candle, attracting the wandering wistful glances of his patient, who ceased to look at him with defiance as her eyes again and again returned to the face, of which, often as it had bent over her, she had no knowledge. All over the unknown room wandered those strange looks, interrogating everything with a wistfulness beyond words. What was this strange unfamiliar world into which, after her trance of suffering, Susan had awakened? She did not know where she was, nor who the people were who surrounded her. But the recollection of deadly peril was not more distinct upon her confused mind than was the sentiment of safety, of love, and watchfulness which somehow abode in this strange dim room, in the little undecipherable circle of faces which surrounded her bed. "Hush!" said Susan again, holding the stranger close. "Here are women--women! nobody will harm us;" then, with a sudden flush over all her face and cry of joy as the doctor suddenly threw the light full upon Mrs. Vincent, who was bending over her, her mind struggled into possession of itself,--"Here is my mother! she has come to take us home!"