then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts,
a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stood
before me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me.

"What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with the rest of
the dream! scatter!"

But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to making
fun of my sorry plight.

"All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go on; I'm in no hurry."

"Prithee what dream?"

"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court--a person
who never existed; and that I am talking to you, who are nothing
but a work of the imagination."

"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned
to-morrow? Ho-ho--answer me that!"

The shock that went through me was distressing. I now began
to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream
or no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity
of dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be
very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any
means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said beseechingly:

"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got,--for you _are_ my
friend, aren't you?--don't fail me; help me to devise some way
of escaping from this place!"

"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors are
in guard and keep of men-at-arms."

"No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?"

"Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause
--hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons--and weightier."

"Other ones? What are they?"

"Well, they say--oh, but I daren't, indeed daren't!"

"Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why do
you tremble so?"

"Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you, but--"

"Come, come, be brave, be a man--speak out, there's a good lad!"

He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear;
then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally
crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his
fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension
of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things
whose very mention might be freighted with death.

"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and
there bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate
enough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me,
I have told