“That he would! He has told me over and over the head is as often wrong as right,--the heart only errs about once in five times.” She fell on my neck and kissed me as I said this, with a sort of rapturous delight. “Your heart will be always right, dear boy,” said she; once more she bent down and kissed me, and then hurried away. This scene must have worked more powerfully on my nerves than I felt, or was aware of, while it was passing; at all events, it brought back my fever, and before night I was in wild delirium. Of the seven long weeks that followed, with all their alternations, I know nothing. My first consciousness was to know myself, as very weak and propped by pillows, in a half-darkened room, in which an old nurse-tender sat and mingled her heavy snorings with the ticking of the clock on the chimney. Thus drowsily pondering, with a debilitated brain, I used to fancy that I had passed away into another form of existence, in which no sights or sounds should come but these dreary breathings, and that remorseless ticking that seemed to be spelling out “eternity.” Sometimes one, sometimes two or three persons would enter the room, approach the bed, and talk together in whispers, and I would languidly lift up my eyes and look at them, and though I thought they were not altogether unknown to me, the attempt at recognition would have been an effort so full of pain that I would, rather than make it, fall back again into apathy. The first moment of perfect consciousness--when I could easily follow all that I heard, and remember it afterwards--was one evening, when a faint but delicious air came in through the open window, and the rich fragrance of the garden filled the room. Captain Hotham and the doctor were seated on the balcony smoking and chatting. “You 're sure the tobacco won't be bad for him?” asked Hotham. “Nothing will be bad or good now,” was the answer. “Effusion has set in.” “Which means, that it's all over, eh?” “About one in a thousand, perhaps, rub through. My own experience records no instance of recovery.” “And you certainly did not take such a gloomy view of his case at first. You told me that there were no vital parts touched?”