ow?" Mr. Weiss asked anxiously.

"I am glad to say that there is a distinct improvement," I replied. "But
we must persevere. He is by no means out of the wood yet."

I examined the coffee, which looked black and strong and had a very
reassuring smell, and, pouring out half a cupful, approached the bed.

"Now, Mr. Graves," I shouted, "we want you to drink some of this."

The flaccid eyelids lifted for an instant but there was no other
response. I gently opened the unresisting mouth and ladled in a couple
of spoonfuls of coffee, which were immediately swallowed; whereupon I
repeated the proceeding and continued at short intervals until the cup
was empty. The effect of the new remedy soon became apparent. He began
to mumble and mutter obscurely in response to the questions that I
bellowed at him, and once or twice he opened his eyes and looked
dreamily into my face. Then I sat him up and made him drink some coffee
from the cup, and, all the time, kept up a running fire of questions,
which made up in volume of sound for what they lacked of relevancy.

Of these proceedings Mr. Weiss and his housekeeper were highly
interested spectators, and the former, contrary to his usual practice,
came quite close up to the bed, to get a better view.

"It is really a most remarkable thing," he said, "but it almost looks as
if you were right, after all. He is certainly much better. But tell me,
would this treatment produce a similar improvement if the symptoms were
due to disease?"

"No," I answered, "it certainly would not."

"Then that seems to settle it. But it is a most mysterious affair. Can
you suggest any way in which he can have concealed a store of the drug?"

I stood up and looked him straight in the face; it was the first chance
I had had of inspecting him by any but the feeblest light, and I looked
at him very attentively. Now, it is a curious fact--though one that most
persons must have observed--that there sometimes occurs a considerable
interval between the reception of a visual impression and its complete
transfer to the consciousness. A thing may be seen, as it were,
unconsciously, and the impression consigned, apparently, to instant
oblivion; and yet the picture may be subsequently revived by memory with
such completeness that its details can be studied as though the object
were still actually visible.

Something of this kind must have happened to me now. Preoccupied as I
was, by the condition of the patient, th