Possibly the reader, though, understanding the force of the Doctor's
illustration better than good stupid Lady Malmaison could do, is still of
opinion that that eminent practitioner's exposition of the real nucleus of
the mystery might have been more explicit. It is all very well to say that
the boy was asleep for seven years and then woke up; but what does such a
statement mean? Are such prolonged slumbers an ordinary occurrence? And if
so, might not the slumberer, after a longer or shorter interval of
wakefulness, fall asleep again? It is to be feared that the old physician
was not quite so well satisfied in his secret mind as he pretended to be,
and that his learned dissertation upon automatic action was little better
than a device to avoid being pressed upon the real point at issue. But it
is always a delicate matter to fathom the depth of a medical man's
sagaciousness.

Mention has already been made of little Kate Battledown, the effect of
whose society on Archibald had been so strangely ungenial. A year or two
after his "awakening" the little maiden was again thrown in his way, and
this time with very different results. There is extant among the family
papers a letter containing a very pretty account of the relations which
were soon established between these small personages. They seem to have
taken to one another at once, and exercised over each other a mutual
fascination. Archibald, keen and domineering with his brother and
sisters, and, so far as his power went, with everybody else--was as sweet
as milk to his childish enchantress; and no doubt his manners, if not his
general character, greatly benefited by her companionship. There is a
picture of the two children painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and now hanging
in the present Dr. Rollinson's parlor (where, doubtless, thousands of his
patients have beheld it, ignorant of its history), which is perhaps as
beautiful an example of English youth and maidenhood at eleven and nine
years of age as could be found in the three kingdoms. The boy, black-eyed