e had taken burning wood from the hearth and set it on a silver
plate. Now she strewed something on the glowing embers.

"Lie straight and still," she said, "and wish thyself where thou wast
when thou leftest that dream."

He did so. A thick, sweet smoke rose from the little fire in the silver
plate, and the nurse was chanting something in a very low voice.

"Men die,
Man dies not.
Times fly,
Time flies not."

That was all he heard, though he heard confusedly that there was more.

He seemed to sink deep into a soft sea of sleep, to be rocked on its
tide, and then to be flung by its waves, roughly, suddenly, on some hard
shore of awakening. He opened his eyes. He was in the little bare front
room in New Cross. Tinkler and the white seal lay on the floor among
white moonflower seeds confusedly scattered, and the gas lamp from the
street shone through the dirty panes on the newspapers and sacking.

"What a dream!" said Dickie, shivering, and very sleepy. "Oh, what a
dream!" He put Tinkler and the seal in one pocket, gathered up the
moon-seeds and put them in the other, drew the old newspapers over him
and went to sleep.

* * * * *

The morning sun woke him.

"How odd," said he, "to dream all that--weeks and weeks, in just a
little bit of one little night! If it had only been true!"

He jumped up, eager to start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of
that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well
start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his
head knocked against the wainscot.

"I had forgotten," he said slowly. "I shouldn't have thought any dream
could have made me forget about my foot."

For he had indeed forgotten it, had leaped up, eagerly, confidently, as
a sound child leaps, and the lame foot had betrayed him, thrown him
down.

He crawled across to where the crutch lay--the old broom, cut down, that
Lady Talbot had covered with black velvet for him.

"And now," he said, "I must get to Gravesend." He looked out of the
window at the dismal, sordid street. "I wonder," he said, "if Deptford
was ever really like it was in my dream--the gardens and the clean river
and the fields?"

He got out of the house when no one was looking, and went off down the
street.

"Clickety-clack" went the crutch on the dusty pavement.

His back ached; his lame foot hurt; his "good" leg was tire