“A woman, I suppose,” answered I, “by constant repetition of her one event, may compensate for the lack of variety.”

“Indeed!” said Zenobia.

While we were talking, Priscilla caught sight of Hollingsworth at a distance, in a blue frock, and with a hoe over his shoulder, returning from the field.  She immediately set out to meet him, running and skipping, with spirits as light as the breeze of the May morning, but with limbs too little exercised to be quite responsive; she clapped her hands, too, with great exuberance of gesture, as is the custom of young girls when their electricity overcharges them.  But, all at once, midway to Hollingsworth, she paused, looked round about her, towards the river, the road, the woods, and back towards us, appearing to listen, as if she heard some one calling her name, and knew not precisely in what direction.

“Have you bewitched her?” I exclaimed.

“It is no sorcery of mine,” said Zenobia; “but I have seen the girl do that identical thing once or twice before.  Can you imagine what is the matter with her?”

“No; unless,” said I, “she has the gift of hearing those ’airy tongues that syllable men’s names,’ which Milton tells about.”

From whatever cause, Priscilla’s animation seemed entirely to have deserted her.  She seated herself on a rock, and remained there until Hollingsworth came up; and when he took her hand and led her back to us, she rather resembled my original image of the wan and spiritless Priscilla than the flowery May-queen of a few moments ago.  These sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by an extreme nervous susceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl, though with diminished frequency as her health progressively grew more robust.

I was now on my legs again.  My fit of illness had been an avenue between two existences; the low-arched and darksome doorway, through which I crept out of a life of old conventionalisms, on my hands and knees, as it were, and gained admittance into the freer region that lay beyond.  In this respect, it was like death.  And, as with death, too, it was good to have gone through it.  No otherwise could I have rid myself of a thousand follies, fripperies, prejudices, habits, and other such worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the crowd along the broad highway, giving them all one sordid aspect before noon-time, however freshly they may have begun their pilgrimage in the dewy morning.  The very substance upon my bones had not been fit to live with in any better, truer, or more energetic mode than that to which I was accustomed.  So it was taken off me and flung aside, like any other worn-out or unseasonable garment; and, after shivering a little while in my skeleton, I began to be clothed anew, and much more satisfactorily than in my previous suit.  In literal and physical truth, I was quite another man.  I had a lively sense of the exultation with which the spirit will enter on the next stage of its eternal progress after leaving the heavy burden of its mortality in an early grave, with as little concern for what may become of it as now affected me for the flesh which I had lost.