the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"

"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
the thickset man.

"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked
Graham.

"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter
of fact."

Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there
a mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.

"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.

"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
trying to decide in an emergency. "We must get you clothes and so forth,
at any rate. Better wait here until some can come. No one will come near
you. You want shaving."

Graham rubbed his chin.

The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly,
listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried
off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting
grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed
suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an
unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and
falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and
sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks.
Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the
woven tumult.

Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"

The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.

"Wild!" he cried, "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"

There was perhaps an answer.

"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But
shout from the balcony."

There was an inaudible reply.

"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."

He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"

He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
moment he was