When I opened my eyes, I lay without moving, staring and unconscious of life as if I had never been. Presently, tiring with the effort, I sank back into the blackness and stillness of night. Awakening anew, and yet not knowing that I lived, something touched my lips, and I opened them as a young bird will, and swallowed what was given me. Drifting again into somber nothingness, I revived, but after what length of time or wherefore I did not know. Then a face bent over mine, and looking down into my glazed and staring eyes, started back with a sob or stifled cry. Now I began to watch the shadows of the room, as a child might, without knowing they were shadows or what they signified. Relapsing once more into unconsciousness, I awakened, and after a while fell to tracing the objects about me, and with some thought that I had seen them before, but distrustfully, so weak was my understanding. Thus days passed, wherein a shadowy face bent over mine, with sorrowful eyes that were always anxious and often filled with tears. Gaining strength, I made out, little by little, the things about me, and doing so, smiled as children will in their sleep or when a toy is flashed before their eyes. By and by the objects more distinct began to fix themselves, and in the guise of friends, but drifting, and purposely, as if to elude me. Thus the past came back, until at last I need no longer study the great canopied bed with its dangling laces, nor the faces of the king and his minister staring at me from off the wall. They were friends, and craning my neck, I looked about for the curious table, and in the sweep of my eye caught sight of my old enemy, the timber-wolf, above the door. I was not at Wild Plum, then! That was gone; but next to it, and now as dear, at the Dragon—Constance’s home. Beyond the window were the big trees and Little Sandy, and about me the treasures that Constance and her father loved. Here it was I had dined and gone to sleep, and strange that it should seem so long when only a night had passed! It was time to rise, and with the thought I sought to lift my head, but all in vain. Falling back and resting, other thoughts came, and not like shadows: the flight from Wild Plum, Moth, the jail, Murderer’s Hollow! At this last I shuddered, so real did it appear. Was it a dream after all, or was I dreaming now? Surely the one or the other! Worn out, I raised my hand; but how white and thin it looked! I had been ill, then, and so had never left the Dragon and Little Sandy. That was it; the things I remembered were visions and nothing else. Reasoning thus, I sighed as one will whose heart is weak or breaking; and scarce had it passed my lips ere a face dearer to me than all else in life bent over mine with a look of pity and tenderest love. "Constance!" "Gilbert!" "Come nearer, dearest, so I can see you better," I whispered, after awhile, afraid to speak aloud lest the vision vanish. "My face touches yours, Gilbert."