completion
of some train of thought which had gone before.

'If this be dreaming,' said I to myself, 'then it must be based on
some very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact that
he spoke of?'

While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It struck me as
strange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream or
reality surrounded him which commonly marks an expected environment of
waking men. With a positive cry of joy, he seized my hand and held it
in his two wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on to
someone whom it loves. I tried to soothe him:

'There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you tonight,
and together we will try to fight this evil dream.' He let go my hand
suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with his
hands.

'Fight it?--the evil dream! Ah! no, sir, no! No mortal power can fight
that dream, for it comes from God--and is burned in here;' and he beat
upon his forehead. Then he went on:

'It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power to
torture me every time it comes.'

'What is the dream?' I asked, thinking that the speaking of it might
give him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and after a long
pause said:

'No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again.'

There was manifestly something to conceal from me--something that lay
behind the dream, so I answered:

'All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should come
again, you will tell me, will you not? I ask, not out of curiosity,
but because I think it may relieve you to speak.' He answered with
what I thought was almost an undue amount of solemnity:

'If it comes again, I shall tell you all.'

Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject to more mundane
things, so I produced supper, and made him share it with me, including
the contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I lit
my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talked
of many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole over
his mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on his
eyelids. He felt it, too, and told me that now he felt all right, and
I might safely leave him; but I told him that, right or wrong, I was
going to see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began to
read as he fell asleep.

By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that presently I
was startled b