n the stateroom gave a shriek that
you could have heard from one end of the train to the other, and
hammered on the door, and wanted to be let out.

"It seemed to take the conductor by surprise, and he faced towards the
stateroom and let the lantern slip off his arm, and it dropped onto the
floor and went out; I remember thinking what a good thing it didn't set
the car on fire. But there in the dark--for the car lamps went out at
the same time with the lantern--I could hear those fellows pulling and
hauling up and down the aisle and scuffling over the floor, and through
all Melford bellowing away, like an orchestral accompaniment to a combat
in Wagner opera, but getting quieter and quieter till his bellow died
away altogether. At the same time the row in the aisle of the car
stopped, and there was perfect silence, and I could hear the snow
rattling against my window. Then I went off into a sound sleep, and
never woke till we got into New York."

The stranger seemed to have reached the end of his story, or at least to
have exhausted the interest it had for him, and he smoked on, holding
his knee between his hands and looking thoughtfully into the fire.

He had left us rather breathless, or, better said, blank, and each
looked at the other for some initiative; then we united in looking at
Wanhope; that is, Rulledge and I did. Minver rose and stretched himself
with what I must describe as a sardonic yawn; Halson had stolen away
before the end, as one to whom the end was known. Wanhope seemed by no
means averse to the inquiry delegated to him, but only to be formulating
its terms. At last he said:

"I don't remember hearing of any case of this kind before.
Thought-transference is a sufficiently ascertained phenomenon--the
insistence of a conscious mind upon a certain fact until it penetrates
the unconscious mind of another and is adopted as its own. But in the
dream state the mind seems passive, and becomes the prey of this or that
self-suggestion, without the power of imparting it to another dreaming
mind. Yet here we have positive proof of such an effect. It appears that
the victim of a particularly terrific nightmare was able to share its
horrors--or rather unable _not_ to share them--with a whole sleeping-car
full of people whose brains helplessly took up the same theme, and
dreamed it, as we may say, to the same conclusions. I said proof, but of
course we can't accept a single instance as establishing a scientific