began laughing.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "When
the Sleeper wakes--_When_!"

He turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face changed,
the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned swiftly at his
exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an expression of
consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.

Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUND OF A TUMULT

Graham's last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells.
He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and
death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses, he
was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at
heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed from
his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still about him, but
the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was altogether
gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been on the
balcony, was looking keenly into his face.

Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that
suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people
shouting together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a
door suddenly closed.

Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
"Where am I?"

He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice
seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.

The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a
slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper's ears.
"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."

He said, something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phial
was handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist
played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment
increased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.

"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's eyes reopened. He was a
pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and a
clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.

"Yes," said Graham.

"You have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have