his anatomy for injured places. He looked so quaintly rueful yet withal
so good-tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter in spite
of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate, musical chuckle,
and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the same time to a cut
upon my finger that was bleeding a little. I shook my head, meaning
thereby that it was nothing, but the stranger with graceful solicitude
took my hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately tore a strip
of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he was wearing and bound
the place up with a woman's tenderness.

Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was time to look about me. Where
was I? It was not the Broadway; it was not Staten Island on a Saturday
afternoon. The night was just over, and the sun on the point of rising.
Yet it was still shadowy all about, the air being marvellously tepid
and pleasant to the senses. Quaint, soft aromas like the breath of
a new world--the fragrance of unknown flowers, and the dewy scent of
never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils; and to my ears came a sound
of laughter scarcely more human than the murmur of the wind in the trees,
and a pretty undulating whisper as though a great concourse of people
were talking softly in their sleep. I gazed about scarcely knowing
how much of my senses or surroundings were real and how much fanciful,
until I presently became aware the rosy twilight was broadening into day,
and under the increasing shine a strange scene was fashioning itself.

At first it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper
surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft,
translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came through it, black and crimson,
and as they seemed to mount into the air other lower hills showed
through the veil with rounded forest knobs till at last the brightening
day dispelled the mist, and as the rosy-coloured gauzy fragments went