"This is the child," he said, "and here must you fulfil a part of your vows. Quick now! There is no time to lose, the child is almost dead. These people think him already a corpse. You see the doctor has told them the fatal words, 'he is dead!'"
Yes, they were weeping. But the old Brahmin put his hands on my head, and submitting to his touch, I felt myself in my dream falling asleep. A dream in a dream. But I woke in my dream, but not on my mat with Gopal near me. I was that boy I thought. I looked out through his eyes, and near me I heard, as if his soul had slipped off to the ether with a sigh of relief. The doctor turned once more and I opened my eyes—his eyes—on him.
The physician started and turned pale. To another I heard him whisper "automatic nerve action." He drew near, and the intelligence in that eye startled him to paleness. He did not see the old Brahmin making passes over this body I was in and from which I felt great waves of heat and life rolling over me—or the boy.
And yet this all now seemed real as if my identity was merged in the boy.
I was that boy and still confused, vague dreams seemed to flit through my brain of some other plane where I thought I was again, and had a faithful servant named Gopal; but that must be dream, this the reality. For did I not see my mother and father, the old doctor and the nurse so long in our house with the children. Yes; of course this is the reality.
And then I feebly smiled, whereon the doctor said:
"Most marvellous. He has revived. He may live."
He was feeling the slow moving pulse and noting that breathing began and that vitality seemed once more to return to the child, but he did not see the old Brahmin in his illusionary body sending air currents of life over the body of this boy, who dreamed he had been a Rajah with a faithful servant named Gopal. Then in the dream sleep seemed to fall upon me. A sensation of falling; falling came to my brain, and with a start I awoke in my palace on my own mat. Turning to see if my servant was there I saw him standing as if full of sorrow or fear for me.
"Gopal, how long have I slept again?"
"It is just morning, master, and I feared you had gone to Yamâ's dominions and left your own Gopal behind."