Chapter 6

About an hour thereafter there lay on a couch that had been hastily
prepared in the study a person of singularly impressive presence: a
thin, mild-looking man, with a peculiar look of delicacy and natural
refinement about him, although he scarcely appeared to be technically
and as to worldly position what we call a gentleman; plain in dress and
simple in manner, not giving the idea of remarkable intellectual gifts,
but with a kind of spiritual aspect, fair, clear complexion, gentle
eyes, still somewhat clouded and obscured by the syncope into which a
blow on the head had thrown him. He looked middle-aged, and yet there
was a kind of childlike, simple expression, which, unless you looked at
him with the very purpose of seeing the traces of time in his face,
would make you suppose him much younger.

"And how do you find yourself now, my good fellow?" asked Doctor
Grimshawe, putting forth his hand to grasp that of the stranger, and
giving it a good, warm shake. "None the worse, I should hope?"
[Endnote: 1.]

"Not much the worse," answered the stranger: "not at all, it may be.
There is a pleasant dimness and uncertainty in my mode of being. I am
taken off my feet, as it were, and float in air, with a faint delight
in my sensations. The grossness, the roughness, the too great
angularity of the actual, is removed from me. It is a state that I like
well. It may be, this is the way that the dead feel when they awake in
another state of being, with a dim pleasure, after passing through the
brief darkness of death. It is very pleasant."

He answered dreamily, and sluggishly, reluctantly, as if there were a
sense of repose in him which he disliked to break by putting any of his
sensations into words. His voice had a remarkable sweetness and
gentleness, though lacking in depth of melody.

"Here, take this," said the Doctor, who had been preparing some kind of
potion in a teaspoon: it may have been a dose of his famous preparation
of spider's web, for aught I know, the operation of which was said to
be of a soothing influence, causing a delightful silkiness of
sensation; but I know not whether it was considered good for
concussions of the brain, such as it is to be supposed the present
patient had undergone. "Take this: it will do you good; and here I
drink your very good health in something that will do me good."

So saying, the grim Doctor quaffed off a tumbler of brandy and water.

"How sweet a contrast," murmured the stranger, "between that scene of
violence and this great peace that has come over me! It is as when one
can say, I have fought the good fight."

"You are right," said the Doctor, with what