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"I never knew a mother's care," replied the traveller, in a low, regretful tone, being weak to the incoming of all soft feelings, in his present state. "Since my boyhood, I have lived among men,--a life of struggle and hard rivalry. It is good to find myself here in the long past, and in a sheltered harbor."

And here he smiled, by way of showing to this old palmer that he saw through the slight infirmity of mind that impelled him to say such things as the above; that he was not its dupe, though he had not strength, just now, to resist its impulse. After this he dozed off softly, and felt through all his sleep some twinges of his wound, bringing him back, as it were, to the conscious surface of the great deep of slumber, into which he might otherwise have sunk. At all such brief intervals, half unclosing his eyes, (like a child, when the mother sits by its bed and he fears that she will steal away if he falls quite asleep, and leave him in the dark solitude,) he still beheld the white-bearded, kindly old man, of saintly aspect, sitting near him, and turning over the pages of his folio volume so softly that not the faintest rustle did it make; the picture at length got so fully into his idea, that he seemed to see it even through his closed eyelids. After a while, however, the slumberous tendency left him more entirely, and, without having been consciously awake, he found himself contemplating the old man, with wide-open eyes. The venerable personage seemed soon to feel his gaze, and, ceasing to look at the folio, he turned his eyes with quiet inquiry to meet those of the stranger. [Endnote: 5.]

"What great volume is that?" asked the latter. [Endnote: 6.]

"It is a book of English chronicles," said the old man, "mostly relating to the part of the island where you now are, and to times previous to the Stuarts."

"Ah! it is to you, a contemporary, what reading the newspaper is to other men," said the stranger; then, with a smile of self-reproach, "I shall conquer this idle mood. I'm not so imbecile as you must think me. But there is something that strangely haunts me,--where, in what state of being, can I have seen your face before. There is nothing in it I distinctly remember; but some impression, some characteristic, some look, with which I have been long ago familiar haunts me and brings back all old scenes. Do you know me?"

The old man smiled. "I knew, long ago, a bright and impressible boy," said he.

"And his name?" said the stranger.

"It was Edward Redclyffe," said the old man.

"Ah, I see who you are," said the traveller, not too earnestly, but with a soft, gratified feeling, as the riddle thus far solved itself. "You are my old kindly instructor. You are Colcord! That is it. I remember you disappeared. You shall tell me, when I am quite myself, what was that mystery,--and whether it is your real self, or only a part of my dream, and going to vanish when I quite awake. Now I shall sleep and dream more of it."

One more waking interval he had that day, and again essayed to enter into conversation with the old man, who had thus strangely again become connected with his life, after having so long vanished from his path.

"Where am I?" asked Edward Redclyffe.

"In the home of misfortune," said Colcord.

"Ah! then I have a right to be here!" said he. "I was born in such a home. Do you remember it?"

"I know your story," said Colcord.

"Yes; from Doctor Grim," said Edward. "People whispered he had made away with you. I never believed it; but finding you here in this strange way, and myself having been shot, perhaps to death, it seems not so strange. Pooh! I wander again, and ought to sleep a little more. And this is the home of misfortune, but not like the squalid place of rage, idiocy, imbecility, drunkenness, where I was born. How many times I have blushed to remember that native home! But not of late! I have struggled; I have fought; I have triumphed. The unknown boy has come to be no undistinguished man! His ancestry, should he ever reveal himself to them, need not blush for the poor foundling."

"Hush!" said the quiet watcher. "Your fever burns you. Take this draught, and sleep a little longer." [Endnote: 7.]

Another day or two found Edward Redclyffe almost a convalescent. The singular lack of impatience that characterized his present mood--the repose of spirit into which he had lapsed--had much to do with the favorable progress of his cure. After strife, anxiety, great mental exertion, and excitement of various kinds, which had harassed him ever since he grew to be a man, had come this opportunity of perfect rest;-- this dream in the midst of which he lay, while its magic boundaries involved him, and kept far off the contact of actual life, so that its sounds and tumults seemed remote; its cares could not fret him; its ambitions, objects good or evil, were shut out from him; the electric wires that had connected him with the battery of life were broken for the time, and he did not feel the unquiet influence that kept everybody else in galvanic motion. So, under the benign influence of the old palmer, he lay in slumberous luxury, undisturbed save by some twinges of no intolerable pain; which, however, he almost was glad of, because it made him sensible that this deep luxury of quiet was essential to his cure, however idle it might seem. For the first time since he was a child, he resigned himself not to put a finger to the evolution of his fortune; he determined to accept all things that might happen, good or evil; he would not imagine an event beyond to-day, but would let one spontaneous and half-defined thought loiter after another, through his mind; listen to the spattering shower,--the puffs of shut-out wind; and look with half-shut eyes at the sunshine glimmering through the ivy- twigs, and illuminating those old devices on the wall; at the gathering twilight; at the dim lamp; at the creeping upward of another day, and with it the lark singing so far away that the thrill of its delicious song could not disturb him with an impulse to awake. Sweet as its carol was, he could almost have been content to miss the lark; sweet and clear, it was too like a fairy trumpet-call, summoning him to awake and struggle again with eager combatants for new victories, the best of which were not worth this deep repose.