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The man laughed. “None of these things, sir,” he said. “The day has been long, and a feeling of weariness overcomes me. I should now like to sleep.”

“That is some new game?” asked the King, intelligently.

“Sleep?” said the Princess Melissa. “We do not know that. What is this sleep?”

The man explained it as best he could, and his account was received with the greatest interest. Many questions were put to him.

“I perceive,” said the King at last, “that this sleep is really a little death. For the time being you are dead. Take my advice, therefore, O stranger, and give it up. It is an awful risk, thus voluntarily to enter into the place of death. Suppose that one day you find something there that keeps you, and you cannot come back again.”

The stranger explained that, so far was this from being the case, that every time when he went to sleep he was more afraid that something would wake him, than that he would never wake at all.

“I fear,” said the King, “that this shows that you have not thought about the matter profoundly.”

“Possibly not,” said the stranger. “But I am as I am constructed. I sleep because I must sleep. Had I but a couch to lie upon, I could be asleep now in five minutes.”

“How exciting,” said the Princess Melissa.

“May we all see it? May we watch you when you are dead of the little death?”

“Most certainly,” said the stranger politely. “I am so tired that I am likely to sleep very soundly, but all the same noise or bright light would wake me again, and that would make me very angry. I must beg, therefore, that when you come to look upon me in my sleep, the light may be subdued and no sound may be made.”

And to this condition they agreed.

A room was prepared for the stranger in the palace. It was thickly carpeted, so that no footfall could sound. It had a curtained entrance, that the stranger might not be disturbed by the sound of the door opening and shutting when people entered to see the show. The room was dimly lit by the flame of a small lamp. In five minutes the stranger was asleep.

One by one they entered the room–the King, the Princess, and all the people of the court–to see this new and awful phenomenon of a man who was dead of his own volition and would yet come to life again. Three ladies of the court fainted on leaving the apartment. The King became terribly anxious. “This is a dangerous game,” he said, “and must be stopped at once. We do not wish to have the death of this stranger on our conscience. Bring, therefore, bright lights and make a loud noise—-“

But here the Princess Melissa intervened. “No,” she said; “he is not really dead, for he still breathes. I watched him most carefully and am sure of it. It is an experiment which he has often made. He tells me that he has had this sleep every night of his life.”

“Doubtless,” said the King, “he wished to make an impression; we are not bound to believe that.”

But the King was bound to admit, though he did so grudgingly, that a man who breathed was not a dead man.

All the night through they watched outside the sleeping-chamber, and about the middle of the night they heard a terrific sound.

“That,” said the King, “is the cry of his death agony. I know it. I am sure of it. We have done wrong.”

As a matter of fact, the sound was the first snore which had ever been heard in that island. It made even the Princess Melissa nervous. But she investigated the phenomenon and reported that no interference seemed to be required. The man was not only breathing, he was breathing more strenuously than he did when he was awake.

Nevertheless a great weight was taken from the King’s mind when his guest came back to life again in the morning. It was noted that the man was none the worse for his strange experience. He seemed even better for it. He was more active and alert. His eye was brighter. He was instantly ready to undertake the fatigue of swimming for a long distance in the sea.