rning feeling as though my
skull was filled with molten metal, while at the back of my neck was a
sharp excruciating pain which caused me to hold my breath.

The Sister apparently noticed my sudden relapse, for she expressed a
hope that I was not feeling worse. I tried to reassure her that I was
all right, but I know I failed to do so, for once again I lost all
knowledge of things about me.

After that I recollect nothing more. Probably I walked on mechanically
back to my bed.

When my lapse had passed, and I again regained consciousness, I found
myself in bed gazing up at the ceiling. On either side of me were men,
also in bed. They were talking in French.

I listened, and in a few seconds I recollected the events of the
previous day. Then a sharp-featured nurse, whom I had not seen before,
told us it was time to dress. I obeyed, but my clothes were entirely
unfamiliar. They were coarse and did not fit me.

While I washed I burst out laughing. The humour of the situation
struck me as distinctly amusing. At one hour I was myself; at the next
I was another being!

Was my case that of Jekyll and Hyde?

I knew, and I felt keenly about it, that I had accepted a bribe to
perform an illicit service. I had posed as a medical man and given a
certificate of death. But my one and only object in life was to see
Mr. De Gex and demand of him a full explanation of the amazing and
suspicious circumstances.

My lapses were intermittent. At times I was fully conscious of the
past. At others my brain was awhirl and aflame. I could think of
nothing, see nothing--only distorted visions of things about me.

Apparently twenty-four hours had passed since I walked in the
sunshine.

The men in the hospital ward were all Frenchmen, apparently of the
lower class. At one end of the room a heated argument was in progress
in which four or five men were gesticulating and wrangling, while one
man was seated on his bed laughing idiotically, it seemed, at his own
thoughts.

Presently a tall thin man in spectacles entered, and addressing me,
asked me to follow him.

I obeyed, and he conducted me to a small kind of office in which two
men were standing. Both were middle-aged, and of official aspect.

Having given me a chair they all seated themselves when the
thin man--who I rightly judged to be the director of the
hospital--commenced to interrogate me.

"How do you feel to-day?" was his first question, which he put in
French in a quie