He proceeded.  “Yesterday evening, my friend called upon me, and said that he had a remarkable case in his house, which he believed would interest me.  The person to whom he alluded was a French boy, whose mental powers had been imperfectly developed from his childhood.  The mischief had been aggravated, when he was about thirteen years old, by a serious fright.  When he was placed in my asylum, he was not idiotic, and not dangerously mad—­it was a case (not to use technical language) of deficient intelligence, tending sometimes toward acts of unreasoning mischief and petty theft, but never approaching to acts of downright violence.  My friend was especially interested in the lad—­won his confidence and affection by acts of kindness—­and so improved his bodily health as to justify some hope of also improving the state of his mind, when a misfortune occurred which has altered the whole prospect.  The poor creature has fallen ill of a fever, and the fever has developed to typhus.  So far, there has been little to interest you—­I am coming to a remarkable event at last.  At the stage of the fever when delirium usually occurs in patients of sound mind, this crazy French boy has become perfectly sane and reasonable!”

I looked at him, when he made this amazing assertion, with a momentary doubt of his being in earnest.  Doctor Wybrow understood me.

“Just what I thought, too, when I first heard it!” he said.  “My friend was neither offended nor surprised.  After inviting me to go to his house, and judge for myself, he referred me to a similar case, publicly cited in the ‘Cornhill Magazine,’ for the month of April, 1879, in an article entitled ‘Bodily Illness as a Mental Stimulant.’  The article is published anonymously; but the character of the periodical in which it appears is a sufficient guarantee of the trustworthiness of the statement.  I was so far influenced by the testimony thus cited, that I drove to Sandsworth and examined the case myself.”

“Did the examination satisfy you?”

“Thoroughly.  When I saw him last night, the poor boy was as sane as I am.  There is, however, a complication in this instance, which is not mentioned in the case related in print.  The boy appears to have entirely forgotten every event in his past life, reckoning from the time when the bodily illness brought with it the strange mental recovery which I have mentioned to you.”

This was a disappointment.  I had begun to hope for some coming result, obtained by the lad’s confession.

“Is it quite correct to call him sane, when his memory is gone?” I ventured to ask.