Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/287

FROM BATTLE TO LOVE I was in an invalid's chair when I came back to consciousness, lying as though upon a bed, yet fully dressed. Someway as my hands groped about, telling me this—for everything was speckled before my eyss—I thought of Judge Dunn, and of the chair in which he sat when I last saw him. I felt no pain, only a dull ache extending through both body and head, and slowly the disfiguring mist cleared from before my eyes, and I began distinguishing objects. At first they were vague, shapeless, unfamiliar; but as I stared at them, the delirium left my brain, and they assumed natural proportions. The room was a strange one, nothing bringing back to me any recollection of the past. It was large and square, having four long windows, three of the curtains being drawn, the fourth sufficiently raised to permit a gleam of sunshine to extend partly across the rich carpet of dark green. The furniture was that of a well-appointed chamber, of light wood, giving to the apartment a clean, cheerful appearance. An unusually large mirror topped the dresser, and I caught sight of myself in the glass, marking the pallor of my face, rendered more noticeable perhaps by a bandage about my forehead. Wherever I was it was evident that neglect was not my portion, and if this was prison, capture was not altogether an unpleasant experience. Still the situation puzzled me, especially as memory returned, and I recalled the incidents of the fight, my fall, and the nature of my probable captors. Those fellows would not show much mercy, for we had certainly cost them dearly; and I could not imagine Calvert Dunn, or Dodd, bringing me into such comfortable quarters as these. [ 271 ]