Half an hour passed in this way, and Annie’s head was beginning to droop from languor and drowsiness, when a sudden exclamation startled her, and she looked up to see her patient’s eyes fixed upon her, while with his finger he pointed to the window opposite, and whispered,
“The star, it’s risen again, when I thought it had set forever. I take it as a good omen, Bill. I shall see her face again.”
Did he think himself in prison still, with that star shining over him, and did he take her for Bill Baker? The thought was not a very complimentary one, but Annie forgot everything in her joy, at this evidence of returning reason.
“Jimmie,” she said softly, and she bent her face so close to his, that her lips touched his forehead, “Jimmie, don’t you know that you are in Annapolis, with me, with Annie Graham. You remember Annie?”
She had many a time said these very words in his ear, hoping somehow to impress them upon him, and now she had succeeded, for he repeated them after her slowly and with long pauses, like a school-boy trying to say a half-learned lesson.
“Jimmie—don’t you—know—that you—are here—in—Annapolis—with me—with—Annie—Graham—You remember—Annie?”
And as he said them consciousness began to struggle back,—the black eyes fastened themselves upon Annie with a wistful look; then they took in her dress, her hands folded in her lap, the decent covering on the bed the furniture of the room, and then throwing up his arms he felt of his flesh, and examined his linen, and patted the pillow, while still the look of wonder and perplexity deepened on his face. Suddenly he let his arms drop helplessly, then stretched them feebly towards Annie, and while both chin and lip quivered touchingly, and the tears streamed from his eyes, he whispered,
“Clean face, clean hands, soft pillow and bed, with the hunger, and thirst, and homesickness gone. This is—yes, this must be God’s land, and she is there with me.”
He fainted then. The shock of coming back to “God’s land” had been too great, and for a week or more he paid but little heed to what was passing around him.
“Don’t you know me, Jimmie? It’s I,—it’s Annie,” Mrs. Graham would say to him, as his restless eyes turned upon her, and he would repeat after her,