trouble on his own noble countenance. I followed him silently into the
open air.

"Who and what is this visitor of yours?" he asked abruptly.

"Who and what? I cannot tell you."

Faber remained some moments musing, and muttering slowly to himself, "Tut!
but a chance coincidence,--a haphazard allusion to a fact which he could
not have known!"

"Faber," said I, abruptly, "can it be that Lilian is the patient in whose
self-suggested remedies you confide more than in the various learning at
command of your practised skill?"

"I cannot deny it," replied Faber, reluctantly. "In the intervals of that
suspense from waking sense, which in her is not sleep, nor yet altogether
catalepsy, she has, for the last few days, stated accurately the precise
moment in which the trance--if I may so call it--would pass away, and
prescribed for herself the remedies that should be then administered. In
every instance, the remedies so self-prescribed, though certainly not
those which would have occurred to my mind, have proved efficacious. Her
rapid progress to reason I ascribe to the treatment she herself ordained
in her trance, without remembrance of her own suggestions when she awoke.
I had meant to defer communicating these phenomena in the idiosyncrasy of
her case until our minds could more calmly inquire into the process by
which ideas--not apparently derived, as your metaphysical school would
derive all ideas, from preconceived experiences--will thus sometimes act
like an instinct on the human sufferer for self-preservation, as the bird
is directed to the herb or the berry which heals or assuages its ailments.