e me if
I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and to let me keep my
reasons to myself."

"That's exactly what he said to me," interposed Allan. "I don't believe
he has got any reasons at all."

"Gently! gently!" said Mr. Hawbury. "We can discuss the subject without
intruding ourselves into anybody's secrets. Let us come to my own method
of dealing with the dream next. Mr. Midwinter will probably not be
surprised to hear that I look at this matter from an essentially
practical point of view."

"I shall not be at all surprised," retorted Midwinter. "The view of a
medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve, seldom ranges
beyond the point of his dissecting-knife."

The doctor was a little nettled on his side. "Our limits are not quite
so narrow as that," he said; "but I willingly grant you that there
are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don't believe.
For example, we don't believe that a reasonable man is justified in
attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes
within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that
there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the
first instance."

"Come; that's fair enough, I'm sure," exclaimed Allan. "He hit you hard
with the 'dissecting-knife,' doctor; and now you have hit him back again
with your 'natural explanation.' Let's have it."

"By all means," said Mr. Hawbury. "Here it is. There is nothing at all
extraordinary in my theory of dreams: it is the theory accepted by
the great mass of my profession. A dream is the reproduction, in the
sleeping state of the brain, of images and impressions produced on it
in the waking state; and this reproduction is more or less involved,
imperfect, or contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the
dreamer is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep.
Without inquiring further into this latter part of the subject--a very
curious and interesting part of it--let us take the theory, roughly and
generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at once to the dream
now under consideration." He took up the written paper from the table,
and dropped the formal tone (as of a lecturer addressing an audience)
into which he had insensibly fallen. "I see one event already in this
dream," he resumed, "which I know to be the reproduction of a waking
impression produced on Mr. Armadale in my own presence. If he will only
help m