king to the Home Office."

* * * * *

As soon as Fletcher heard the voice of the office messenger through
the telephone he instantly realised his surroundings, and the strange
experience he had just gone through, which had seemed so long and which
in reality had been so brief, left little more impression on him than
that which remains with a man who has been immersed in a brown study or
who has been staring at something, say a poster in the street, and has
not noticed the passage of time.

The next day he returned to his work at the office, and his
fellow-clerks, during the whole of the next week, noticed that he was
more zealous and more painstaking than ever. On the other hand, his
periodical fits of abstraction grew more frequent and more pronounced.
On one occasion he took a paper to the head of the department for
signature, and after it had been signed, instead of removing it from
the table, he remained staring in front of him, and it was not until the
head of the department had called him three times loudly by name that he
took any notice and regained possession of his faculties. As these
fits of absent-mindedness grew to be somewhat severely commented on, he
consulted a doctor, who told him that what he needed was change of
air, and advised him to spend his Sundays at Brighton or at some other
bracing and exhilarating spot. Fletcher did not take the doctor's
advice, but continued spending his spare time as he did before, that is
to say, in going to some big junction and watching the express trains go
by all day long.

One day while he was thus employed--it was Sunday, in August of
19--, when the Egyptian Exhibition was attracting great crowds of
visitors--and sitting, as was his habit, on a bench on the centre
platform of Slough Station, he noticed an Indian pacing up and down the
platform, who every now and then stopped and regarded him with peculiar
interest, hesitating as though he wished to speak to him. Presently the
Indian came and sat down on the same bench, and after having sat there
in silence for some minutes he at last made a remark about the heat.

"Yes," said Fletcher, "it is trying, especially for people like myself,
who have to remain in London during these months."

"You are in an office, no doubt," said the Indian.

"Yes," said Fletcher.

"And you are no doubt hard worked."

"Our hours are not long," Fletcher replied, "and I should not complain
of overwork if I did not happen to suffer