The exquisite season of Indian Summer, the fifth season of the year in the mountain region of Virginia, set in early, and one morning when the air was so soft that it brought to the surface all the gentle, kindly impulses of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the rough touch of frost, Amanda found herself curiously moved as she stepped lightly about Vivian's room, waiting for him to awake. It often happens that a mental preparation unconsciously takes place in us for events about to happen. A letter is on its way to us, and we think of the writer, sometimes expressing a solicitude the letter's contents justify. A friend visits us and we meet him with the remark that we were at that moment longing for his presence. Some catastrophe takes place that we were anticipating, and if a pleasure is in the air its approach is heralded by a peculiar elation and excitement that our occupations cannot account for. These are more tangible things, and easier to understand than the subtle atmospheric changes that pass along from heart to heart. How can we explain the power affection has to send its prophet before to prepare for its coming? In some unexpected hour a certain something tugs at our heart-strings and tunes them up so that when the right hand is extended a melody is evoked that we did not think of or intend. Amanda was a practical woman, not an emotional one, but she was not therefore any the less alive to fine shades of feeling. She dusted the bedroom with a piece of dampened cheese-cloth, set carefully upon the stand the slender necked Bohemian vase of flowers that were Miss Evy's morning tribute, and laid out clean towels beside the basin of fresh water upon the chair by the bed, as methodically as usual. Yet she was conscious of being in a state of expectancy, as if she stood upon the eve of something. Vivian opened his eyes, larger and clearer for his three weeks' illness, and looked in her face with that solemn expression that accompanies the return of consciousness after the delirium of fever, and she trembled under the rush of tenderness that his gaze awakened. "Amanda!" he said feebly, "you in here! Aren't you up early?" "Not so very early, dear," she responded, very gently. "It's you who have slept late." "Strange I don't feel more like getting up," he remarked. Then his gaze wandered over the room, and came back in perplexity to her face. "Are you the genii?" he asked with a little smile. "Am I what?" She thought his wits were wandering again. "The genii. I must be Prince Camaralzaman. I went to sleep in my own room last night, and wake up in this, which I vow I never saw before." "You were indeed brought here, but not from your own room. You have been here three weeks, Vivian. You fell from your horse into Mowbray Gulch and hurt your head, and you have had brain fever." She spoke slowly, and he followed her words attentively, closing his eyes when she was through, and lying perfectly quiet for a minute. Then he said: