“I declare, they look like them hyacinths in the window,—­don’t they?  What a lovely white color!”

“I think, wife,” answered the man, as he took a handful of the kernels and looked at them, “this corn is a good deal like human nature.  When we’re all shut up in ourselves, we’re poor creatures;—­but touch us with the live coals of the Holy Spirit, and we turn out something refreshing.  Fact is, wife, we’re good for nothing, till we’re turned inside out.”

The picture faded.  It was a very homely one.

Fred turned to the soul by his side, but she was no longer visible.

“Escaped, somehow!  I wonder, now, how?”

But he had scarcely spoken, when he saw, by a slight movement of the door, that she must have gone out that way.  It was just closing.  With a tremendous effort of will, he tried to follow her, but in vain.  He had been so much in the habit of looking after himself only, that his untrained faculties refused to obey him.  As a last resource, he sank passively towards the form which still lay prone on the couch.  How he was again to join soul and body he could not guess.  But, apparently, there was no difficulty.  The spirit which had called him out of himself, for a little while, had departed, and, with her, both the power and the desire of separation.  He joined his sensuous existence with ease and pleasure, and with no perceptible lapse of consciousness.  No sooner had he obtained the use of his tongue, than he made an inarticulate noise.  The door, which had been all that time swinging, opened again, and the velvet-footed Martin appeared.

“Who went out, Martin?”

“Out of here, Sir?  No one, Sir.”

“Who opened the door, then?—­What’s that in your hand?”

“The chloroform, Sir, you just handed me.”

“Just handed you?”

“Yes, Sir;—­you gave it back to me not a quarter of a minute ago.”

“Have I been asleep, Martin?”

“I should judge not, Sir.  You didn’t take more than two sniffs at the bottle.  I just had time to go to the door when you spoke to me.”

“Martin,—­is the window close?”

“Perfectly close, Sir.”

“You may go.”

* * * * *

PALFREY’S AND ARNOLD’S HISTORIES.[A]

[Footnote A:  History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty. By John Gorham Palfrey.  Vol.  I. Boston:  Little, Brown, & Co. 1858. 8vo. pp. 638.

History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. By Samuel Greene Arnold & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 574.]