s they rested on my darling's
face--my own darling in a soft white dress, kneeling by my bedside,
with both her arms round me. A vigorous patting of the pillow behind
me revealed Mrs. Splinter, tearful too: "He's come to now. Don't
bother him with talk, Miss Bessie. I'll fetch the tea."

And with motherly insistance she brought me a steaming bowl of
beef-tea, while I still lay, holding Bessie's hand, with a feeble
dawning that the vision was real.

"No," she said as Bessie put out her arm for the bowl, "you prop up
his head. I've got a steddyer hand: you'd just spill it all over his
go to-meetin' suit."

I looked down at myself. I was still dressed in the clothes that I
had worn--when was it? last week?--when I had started for the Shaker
meeting.

"How long?" I said feebly.

"Only this morning, you darling boy, it all happened; and here we are,
snug at Mrs. Splinter's, and Mary Jane is getting the cottage ready
for us as fast as ever she can."

How good that beef-tea was! Bessie knew well what would give it the
_sauce piquante_. "Ready for us!"

"Here's the doctor at last," said Hiram, putting his head in at the
door. "Why, hillo! are we awake?"

"The doctor! Dr. Wilder?" I said beamingly. How good of Bessie! how
thoughtful!

"Not Dr. Wilder, you dear old boy!" said Bessie, laughing and
blushing, "though I sha'n't scold you, Charlie, for that!" in a
whisper in my ear. "It's Dr. Bolster of Lee. Hiram has been riding all
over the country for him this afternoon."

"I'll go down to him," I said, preparing to rise.

"No you won't;" and Mrs. Splinter's strong arm, as well as Bessie's
soft hand, patted me down again.

Dr. Bolster pronounced, as well he might, that all danger was over.
The blow on my head--I must have struck it with force against the
projecting window-shelf as I sprang up--was enough to have stunned me;
but the doctor, I found, was inclined to theorize: "A sudden vertigo,
a dizziness: the Shaker hymns and dances have that effect sometimes
upon persons viewing them for the first time. Or perhaps the heat of
the room." He calmly fingered my pulse for a few seconds, with his
fat ticking watch in his other hand, and then retired to the bureau to
write a prescription, which I was indignantly prepared to repudiate.
But Bessie, in a delightful little pantomime, made signs to me to be
patient: we could throw it all out of the window afterward if need be.

"A soothing draught, and let him keep quiet fo