EXHAUSTED nature asserted her privilege, and once more Mr Blair's senses were steeped for a long succession of hours in the profoundest forgetfulness. The clamour of turbulent voices, with which the chambers below him resounded, during a great part of the evening of that day, had no power to rouse him from this deep and motionless slumber; and when he at length awoke again about the rising of the moon, everything about him was silent, his brain felt cool and composed, and he fixed his eyes steadfastly upon a human figure kneeling alone at the foot of the bed on which he was lying. The feeble twilight was not enough to shew him anything more than the general outline, and he continued gazing on it, for some time, without betraying, either by word or gesture, that sleep had deserted his eyelids.

At last he said, “Friend, who are you?—who is here with me?” in a whisper; and the moment he had said so, the kneeling man arose slowly, and bending over him, and taking hold of his hand, made answer also in a whisper, “It is I—it is John Maxwell—Heaven be praised that you see me!”

Mr Blair drew his hand from between the old man's clasping fingers, and pulled the sheet over his face, and replied, groaning deeply, “John Maxwell, John Maxwell, you know not what you do, you know not whom you bend over, you know not for whom you have prayed!”

“Dear sir, dear Mr Adam,” replied the old man, “I pray you be composed; look at me, and you will know me well:—I am John Maxwell, and you are Adam Blair, my friend, my minister—you have had a sweet sleep, and all will yet be well again.”

“Oh, never!” the sick man groaned from underneath his bedclothes, “Never—never—never more! Leave me, old man, leave a sinner, an outcast, a wretch abandoned of the Almighty. I pray you, leave me to myself!—Against you also have I sinned.”

“Sir, dear sir, you wander; your mind is not yet restored; your dreams and visions yet hang about you.