'Fifty years,
fifty years, fifty years,' over and over again. This she did until at
last she died; and then there was her funeral; and she was buried; and
there was a stone put up over her head with her name on it."

John Gayther smiled with approbation. He felt sure he was going to hear
a story to his liking. The captain smoked steadily. As he had been
advised, he would wait until he felt firm ground beneath him before he
made any further remarks. As for the Mistress of the House, she looked
at her daughter, and wondered. The story continued:

"All this happened a few years before the middle of a century, and a few
years before the end of a century Miss Amanda regained consciousness.
That is to say, she woke up at the end of fifty years, exactly as she
had been in the habit of waking up at seven o'clock in the morning. But
although she was conscious she did not understand how it was possible
she should be so. She did not see; she did not hear; she did not feel.
She had no body; no hands or feet; no eyes or ears: she had nothing; and
she knew she had nothing. She simply was conscious, and that was all
there was about it. She was not surprised; she seemed to take her state
and condition as a matter of course, and, to a certain degree, she
comprehended it. She remembered perfectly well that she had lost
consciousness as she was saying 'Fifty years, fifty years, fifty years'
over and over again; and now she knew that, as she had regained
consciousness, the fifty years must have passed; so, instead of
wondering how things had come to be as they were, she, or rather her
consciousness, set itself to work to observe everything around it and
about it. This had always been Miss Amanda's habit of mind.

"Now I want to explain," said the young lady, "that in one way it will
be troublesome for me to express myself exactly as I tell this story. Of
course Miss Amanda did not exist; it was only her consciousness which
observed things: but I think it will be a great deal less awkward for me
if I speak of that consciousness as Miss Amanda. None of us really
understands consciousnesses with their outsides all hulled off as John
is doing with those seeds which he drops into the basin. Each one of
those little seeds has within it a power which we do not understand. And
that is the way with Miss Amanda's consciousness."

"There," said the captain; "I agree with you. Nobody can object to
that."

"The first thing of which Miss Amanda be