"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all right--I didn't find a single strange letter--every last one of them meant something--and I know figures, too--and now I'm as hungry for print as I am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own master, shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick." "A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner--that's what you'd be! Head feel all right?" "Fine!--I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all before." "It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him over. He's getting back to himself--stronger every hour. We often have these things to contend with." And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case. Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad.