an and he could seek to atone for them,
but he felt no personal remorse. "He was not I," would have reasoned the
mind of Berselius; "those acts were not my acts, because _now I could not
commit them_," so he would have reasoned had he reasoned on the matter at
all. But he did not. In that wild outburst by the Silent Pools the ego had
screamed aloud, raving against itself, raving against the trick that fate
had played it, by making it the slave of two personalities, and then
torturing it by showing it the acts of the old personality through the
eyes of the new.

When the brain fever had passed, it awoke untroubled; the junction had
been effected, the new Berselius was It, and all the acts of the old
Berselius were foreign to it and far away.

It is thus the man who gets religion feels when the great change comes on
his brain. After the brain-storm and the agony of new birth comes the
peace and the feeling that he is "another man." He feels that all his sins
are washed away; in other words, he has lost all sense of responsibility
for the crimes he committed in the old life, he has cast them off like an
old suit of clothes. The old man is dead. Ah, but is he? Can you atone for
your vices by losing your smell and taste for vice, and slip out of your
debt for crime by becoming another man?

Does the old man ever die?

The case of Berselius stirs one to ask the question, which is more
especially interesting as it is prompted by a case not unique but almost
typical.

The interesting point in Berselius's case lay in the question as to
whether his change of mind was initiated by the injury received in the
elephant country or by the shock at the Silent Pools. In other words, was
it due to some mechanical pressure on the brain produced by the accident,
or was it due to "repentance" on seeing suddenly unveiled the hideous
drama in which he had taken part?

This remains to be seen.

At the end of the fourth week Berselius was able to leave his bed, and
every day now marked a steady improvement in strength.

Not a word about the past did he say, not a question did he ask, and what
surprised Adams especially, not a question did he put about Meeus, till
one day in the middle of the fifth week.

Berselius was seated in one of the arm chairs of the sitting room when he
suddenly raised his head.

"By the way," said he, "where is the _Chef de Poste_?"

"He is dead," replied Adams.

"Ah!" said Berselius; there was almost a no