om have you been
talking?"

Suddenly, I know not why, I thought of the grey stranger, and, with a
laugh, I cried:--

"The grey traveller taught me all I have said to you."

"The grey traveller! Who may he be?"

But I lay back upon the pillows and refused to answer, and very soon the
doctor went, still bending uneasy, nervous eyes upon me.

In those eyes I read the change that had stolen over my intellect, as in
the hand-mirror I had read the change that had stolen over my face. This
strange fever had caused both soul and body to blossom. I trembled with
an exquisite joy. Had Fate relented to me at last? Was it possible that
I was to know the joys of the heroes? I longed for, yet feared my full
recovery. In it alone should I discover how sincere was my
transformation. Doctor Wedderburn did not come to me again. The days
passed, my convalescence strengthened, watched over by the pretty nurse,
Kate Walters, a fresh, pure, pious, innocent, beautiful soul, tender,
temperate, and pitiful for all sorrow and evil. At length I was well. At
length I knew, to some extent, my new, my marvellous self. For I had,
indeed, been folded up in my fever like a vesture, and, like a vesture,
changed. I had grown taller, expanded, put forth mighty muscles as a
tree puts forth leaves. My cheeks and my eyes glowed with the radiance
of strong health. I went out with my cousin Gavin, whose estate marched
with mine, and I shot so well that he was filled with admiration, and
forthwith conceived a sort of foolish worship for me--having a
sportsman's soul but no real mind. For the first time in my life I felt
absolutely at home on a horse, an unwonted skill came to my hands, and I
actually schooled Gavin's horses over some fences he had had set up in a
grass park at the Mains of Cossens. The keepers who had once secretly
jeered at me were now at my very feet. Their children looked upon me as
a young god. I rejoiced in my strength as a giant. But I asked myself
then, as I ask myself now--what does it mean? The days of miracles are
over. Yet, is this not a miracle? And in a miracle is there not a gleam
of terror, as there is a gleam of stormy yellow in the fated opal? But
here I leave my condition of body alone, and pass on to the episode of
Doctor Wedderburn, partially related in the newspapers of the day and
marvelled at, I believe, by all who ever knew, or even set eyes upon
him.

The doctor, as I have said, did not come again to see me, but