"Ah! it is to you, a contemporary, what reading the newspaper is to other men," said the stranger; then, with a smile of self-reproach, "I shall conquer this idle mood. I'm not so imbecile as you must think me. But there is something that strangely haunts me,--where, in what state of being, can I have seen your face before. There is nothing in it I distinctly remember; but some impression, some characteristic, some look, with which I have been long ago familiar haunts me and brings back all old scenes. Do you know me?"
The old man smiled. "I knew, long ago, a bright and impressible boy," said he.
"It was Edward Redclyffe," said the old man.
"Ah, I see who you are," said the traveller, not too earnestly, but with a soft, gratified feeling, as the riddle thus far solved itself. "You are my old kindly instructor. You are Colcord! That is it. I remember you disappeared. You shall tell me, when I am quite myself, what was that mystery,--and whether it is your real self, or only a part of my dream, and going to vanish when I quite awake. Now I shall sleep and dream more of it."
One more waking interval he had that day, and again essayed to enter into conversation with the old man, who had thus strangely again become connected with his life, after having so long vanished from his path.
"In the home of misfortune," said Colcord.
"Ah! then I have a right to be here!" said he. "I was born in such a home. Do you remember it?"
"Yes; from Doctor Grim," said Edward. "People whispered he had made away with you. I never believed it; but finding you here in this strange way, and myself having been shot, perhaps to death, it seems not so strange. Pooh! I wander again, and ought to sleep a little more. And this is the home of misfortune, but not like the squalid place of rage, idiocy, imbecility, drunkenness, where I was born. How many times I have blushed to remember that native home! But not of late! I have struggled; I have fought; I have triumphed. The unknown boy has come to be no undistinguished man! His ancestry, should he ever reveal himself to them, need not blush for the poor foundling."
"Hush!" said the quiet watcher. "Your fever burns you. Take this draught, and sleep a little longer." [Endnote: 7.]