It was midwinter now, and the long stretches of pasturage and meadow land outside the walls were blasted and sere when the old mute, whom I had seen twice before, let me out of the big gate. When I returned he was there to open the gate for me and help me with my baggage. I found Rayel at his father's bedside. The sick man was asleep, and I went at once to the library, where Rayel soon came, as was his custom in the afternoon, for a lesson in talking. Both my uncle and myself had taken great pains to teach him this accomplishment, and his progress had been even more rapid than we thought possible. He caught the significance of words with astonishing ease, but found some difficulty in producing their sound. He went about it with great patience, however, repeating the hardest words after me until he was able to pronounce them correctly. But although the work was often tedious we both got much fun out of it. I had never heard the sound of laughter in that house. One day I broke its solemn spell by laughing heartily at the grotesque distortion of my cousin's face incidental to the production of a difficult sound. He stopped suddenly and looked at me, half alarmed. This made me laugh more heartily, and he grasped my hand with the serious air of a physician feeling the pulse of his patient. Being assured there was no danger, he indulged in a little offhand cachinnation himself and was, I judged, well pleased with the trial, for he repeated it frequently afterward, and greatly to his amusement. The word “woman,” and others related to it, puzzled him not a little, for he had never seen a woman, except through the medium of my own mind and that of his father. The subject interested him, and he gave much serious thought to it, questioning me closely at some of our interviews, as if dissatisfied with the idea conveyed to him. Our discussions, however, had reached some slumbering chord in him, which, once touched, stirred his blood with its vibrations. I do not think his isolation could have lasted much longer, for he became restless and eager to see the world. Rayel was greatly depressed by his father's illness. For months after that night, the excitement of which had so hastened the failure of the old man's strength, the silence of the great house was rarely broken by the sound of our voices. My uncle lay helpless in a deep sleep most of the time, never able to leave his bed until, revived by the freshness of approaching summer, he had strength enough to sit in an easy-chair by the window. Some fatal malady, the nature of which he did not disclose to me, was evidently sapping his strength. I had urged him more than once to let me summon a physician, but he would not permit me to do so. When summer came at last, he grew stronger, and was able to walk, supported by Rayel, to his chair in the open courtyard among the flowers.