faculties vouchsafed to trance would be withdrawn. 'As for my life,' she
said quietly, as if unconscious of our temporary joy or woe in the term of
its tenure here,--'as for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision
obscure; on my life a dark and cold shadow is resting. I cannot foresee
if it will pass away. When I strive to look around, I see but my
Allen--'"

"And so," said I, mastering my emotions, "in bidding me hope, you did not
rely on your own resources of science, but on the whisper of Nature in the
brain of your patient?"

"It is so."

We both remained silent some moments, and then, as he disappeared within
my house, I murmured,--

"And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees only me! Is
there some prophet-hint of Nature there also, directing me not to scorn
the secret which a wanderer, so suddenly dropped on my solitude, assures
me that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker? And oh! that dark
wanderer--has Nature a marvel more weird than himself?"

[1] "Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labours--the fluxional
calculus, physical astronomy, and optics--a very large portion of his
time, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of which
scarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eager and
ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming force.
What theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in that laboratory
where, it is said, the fire was scarcely extinguished for weeks together,
will never be known. It is certain that no success attended his labours;