host
replied, with a reassuring smile. "It will be better to avoid agitating
talk until you are a little more yourself. Will you oblige me by taking
a couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do you good. I am a
physician."

I repelled the glass with my hand and sat up on the couch, although
with an effort, for my head was strangely light.

"I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you have been doing
with me," I said.

"My dear sir," responded my companion, "let me beg that you will not
agitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanations
so soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you will
first take this draught, which will strengthen you somewhat."

I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, "It is not so
simple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell you how you came here.
You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you. You have
just been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly, trance. So much
I can tell you. You say you were in your own house when you fell into
that sleep. May I ask you when that was?"

"When?" I replied, "when? Why, last evening, of course, at about ten
o'clock. I left my man Sawyer orders to call me at nine o'clock. What
has become of Sawyer?"

"I can't precisely tell you that," replied my companion, regarding me
with a curious expression, "but I am sure that he is excusable for not
being here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when it
was that you fell into that sleep, the date, I mean?"

"Why, last night, of course; I said so, didn't I? that is, unless I
have overslept an entire day. Great heavens! that cannot be possible;
and yet I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It was
Decoration Day that I went to sleep."

"Decoration Day?"

"Yes, Monday, the 30th."

"Pardon me, the 30th of what?"

"Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into June, but that
can't be."

"This month is September."

"September! You don't mean that I've slept since May! God in heaven!
Why, it is incredible."

"We shall see," replied my companion; "you say that it was May 30th
when you went to sleep?"

"Yes."

"May I ask of what year?"

I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments.

"Of what year?" I feebly echoed at last.

"Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that I shall
be able to tell you how long you have slept."

"It was the year 1887,"