conscious of each other? United by a spiritual bond, undiscovered
and unsuspected by us in the flesh, did we two, who had met as
strangers on the fatal bridge, know each other again in the
trance? You who have loved and lost--you whose one consolation it
has been to believe in other worlds than this--can you turn from
my questions in contempt? Can you honestly say that they have
never been _your_ questions too?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE KINDRED SPIRITS

THE morning sunlight shining in at a badly curtained window; a
clumsy wooden bed, with big twisted posts that reached to the
ceiling; on one side of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the
other side, an elderly gentleman unremembered by me at that
moment--such were the objects that presented themselves to my
view, when I first consciously returned to the world that we live
in.

"Look, doctor, look! He has come to his senses at last."

"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this." My mother was
rejoicing over me on one side of the bed; and the unknown
gentleman, addressed as "doctor," was offering me a spoonful of
whisky-and-water on the other. He called it the "elixir of life";
and he bid me remark (speaking in a strong Scotch accent) that he
tasted it himself to show he was in earnest.

The stimulant did its good work. My head felt less giddy, my mind
became clearer. I could speak collectedly to my mother; I could
vaguely recall the more marked events of the previous evening. A
minute or two more, and the image of the person in whom those
events had all centered became a living image in my memory. I
tried to raise myself in the bed; I asked, impatiently, "Where is
she?"

The doctor produced another spoonful of the elixir of life, and
gravely repeated his first address to me.

"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this."

I persisted in repeating my question:

"Where is she?"

The doctor persisted in repeating his formula:

"Take a sup of this."

I was too weak to contest the matter; I obeyed. My medical
attendant nodded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now,
he'll do." My mother had some compassion on me. She relieved my
anxiety in these plain words:

"The lady has quite recovered, George, thanks to the doctor
here."

I looked at my professional colleague with a new interest. He was
the legitimate fountainhead of the information that I was dying
to have poured into my mind.

"How did you revive her?" I asked. "Where is she now?"

The doctor held up his hand, warning me to stop.

"We shall do well, sir, if we proceed systematically," he began,
in a very positive manner. "You will understand, that every time
you open your mouth, it will be to take a sup of this, and not to
speak. I shall tell you, in due course, and the good lady, your
mother, will tell you, all that you have any need to know. As I
happen to have been first on what you may call the scene of
action, it stands in the fit order of things that I should speak
first. You will just permit me to mix a little more of the elixir
of life, and then, as the poet says, my plain unvarnished tale I
shall deliver."

So he spoke, pronouncing in his strong Scotch accent the most
carefully selected English I had ever heard. A hard-headed,
square-shouldered, pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly
useless to contend with him. I turned to my mother's gentle face
for encouragement; and I let my doctor have his own way.

"My name," he proceeded, "is MacGlue. I had the honor of
presenting my respects at your house yonder when you first came
to live in this neighborhood. You don't remember me at present,
which is natural enough in the unbalanced condition of your mind,
consequent, you will understand (as a professional person
yourself) on copious loss of blood."

There my patience gave way.

"Never mind me!" I interposed. "Tell me about the lady!"

"You have opened your mouth, sir!" cried Mr. MacGlue, severely.
"You know the penalty--take a sup of this. I told you we should
proceed systematically," he went on, after he had forced me to
submit to the penalty. "Everything in its place, Mr.
Germaine--everything in its place. I was speaking of your bodily
condition. Well, sir, and how did I discover your bodily


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