“Does time run backward here? When I left home it was the 17th.”
“Seventeenth of what?” said Mr. Earl.
“Seventeenth of January.”
“Now it is the 14th of March,” said Mr. Earl.
Mr. Earl thought Mr. Brown was out of his mind, and sent for a physician. To the doctor he said his name was Ansel Bourne; that he remembered seeing the Adams Express wagons on Dorrance Street in Providence on Jan. 17th, and remembered nothing since, until he awoke here this morning, March 14th.
“These people,” said he, “tell me that I have been here six weeks, and have been living with them all this time; I have no recollection of ever having seen one of them, until this morning.”
His nephew, Mr. H., was telegraphed to in Providence.
“Do you know Ansel Bourne?”
Reply: “He is my uncle; wire me where he is, and if well.”
Mr. H., went on to Norristown, took charge of his uncle and his affairs, sold out his store property, and Mr. A. J. Brown went back and resumed his life in Rhode Island as Ansel Bourne, but the time from Jan. 17th to March 14th was to him a blank.