his own mind, only three hours instead of three weeks, he failed utterly to make out, and he had to give it up.
But it was all the same. As soon as his sense and reason returned to him he began to improve rapidly. The flesh began to come. Bare as his ribs were, it was not long before it ceased to be possible to count them. Soon his limbs were getting stout, thin as they had been. He recovered more rapidly than even Grey Dermot did. If the sort of illness he had was a puzzle to people, the recovery he made puzzled them still more. When people saw the sort of sickness he had, and how he was out of his right mind and senses, without consciousness or speech, some of them said there was no possibility of his ever rising out of the bed he was in. Others said that, should it happen that he recovered from the sickness, that would be little good for him, because he would never be anything but a fool, and that it would be better for him to die than to be such an object of pity before the people. Others said that things would be worse with him than even that, because his speech was as much ruined as his mind, and that if he were to live eighty years he would never speak a word during his life.
When they all found that he was up, and recovering fast, and that he had his speech in full vigour, and that there was nothing defective or missing in his sense or in his reason, but that he was as discerning and as sharp-witted as ever, they were very glad, no doubt, but their wonder was as great as their joy, and I promise you they were sorry enough that they had not kept silence until they knew what
