Approaching close to him, Lyman looked into his eyes with a searching expression, as if endeavoring to fathom his very thoughts.
Still upon his elbow, Cobb returned his gaze and asked:
“Well! is it time to get up? Why do you look at me in such a manner?” and a feeling of fear ran through him that he might be laboring under a hideous dream, and that he was not only alive again, but had never been dead to the world, as he thought.
The sorrowful expression of Lyman’s eyes disappeared, and a glad smile parted his lips.
“Thank God, my boy, you are yourself again! We have watched you for a long time, hoping for this return to consciousness. Do you indeed know me?” and he leaned over and took the other’s hand.
“Of course I know you. Have I been sick? have I lain here long? Has everything been a dream? or am I awake in the new era?” and as he asked the question, he sat up in bed.
“You are laboring under no delusion, Mr. Cobb,” Lyman replied, smiling at the man’s eagerness on the subject. “You are the same man whom we rescued from the pedestal of Sutro’s statue, and you are still in the land of the living, after years of inanimation. You have had a long and most severe struggle for your life since being brought here on the night we dug you out of the pedestal. It is now the 16th of September, almost three months since your release, and you have lain upon your bed or sat in your chair nearly all the time. Your mind has wandered, and you have known no one until to-day. We have sat near you for hours, and for hours have listened to the history of your life.”
As he ceased speaking, he arose and filled a glass with wine, and gave it to the other, saying that it was necessary that he should get well as soon as possible, now that he was himself again.
“And I have lain here since June 22d?” Cobb asked again.
“Yes; lain, sat, and walked—for you did walk a very little of late.”