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“It’s easily explained, at any rate,” Mr. Molesworth suggested, “why you see a dark-skinned man in your dream.”

“But I tell you, my dear sir, he has been a part of the dream from the beginning . . . before I went to Wren’s, and long before ever I thought of Burmah. He’s as old as the church itself, and the foreshore and the cottage–the whole scene, in fact–though I can’t say he’s half as distinct. I can’t tell you in the least, for instance, what his features are like. I’ve said that the upper part of the dream is vague to me; at the end of the foreshore, that is, where the cottage stands; the church tower I can see plainly enough to the very top. But over by the cottage– above the porch, as you may say–everything seems to swim in a mist: and it’s up in that mist the fellow’s head and shoulders appear and vanish. Sometimes I think he’s looking out of the window at me, and draws back into the room as if he didn’t want to be seen; and the mist itself gathers and floats away with the hissing sound I told you about. . . .”

Sir John’s voice paused abruptly. The train was drawing near the M—- viaduct, and Mr. Molesworth from force of habit had turned his eyes to the window, to gaze down the green valley. He withdrew them suddenly, and looked around at his companion.

“Ah, to be sure,” he said vaguely; “I had forgotten the hissing sound.”

It was curious, but as he spoke he himself became aware of a loud hissing sound filling his ears. The train lurched and jolted heavily.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Sir John, half rising in his seat, “something’s wrong.” He was staring past Mr. Molesworth and out of the window. “Nasty place for an accident, too,” he added in a slow, strained voice.

The two men looked at each other for a moment. Sir John’s face wore a tense expression–a kind of galvanised smile. Mr. Molesworth closed his eyes, instinctively concealing his sudden sickening terror of what an accident just there must mean: and for a second or so he actually had a sensation of dropping into space. He remembered having felt something like it in dreams three or four times in his life: and at the same instant he remembered a country superstition gravely imparted to him in childhood by his old nurse, that if you dreamt of falling and didn’t wake up before reaching the bottom, you would surely die. The absurdity of it chased away his terror, and he opened his eyes and looked about him with a short laugh. . . .

The train still jolted heavily, but had begun to slow down, and Mr. Molesworth drew a long breath as a glance told him that they were past the viaduct. Sir John had risen, and was leaning out of the farther window. Something had gone amiss, then. But what?

He put the question aloud. Sir John, his head and shoulders well outside the carriage-window, did not answer. Probably he did not hear.

As the train ran into M—- Station and came to a standstill, Mr. Molesworth caught a glimpse of the station-master, in his gold-braided cap, by the door of the booking-office. He wore a grave, almost a scared look. The three or four country-people on the sunny platform seemed to have their gaze drawn by the engine, and somebody ahead there was shouting. Sir John Crang, without a backward look, flung the door open and stepped out. Mr. Molesworth was preparing to follow–and by the cramped feeling in his fingers was aware at the same instant that he had been gripping the arm-rest almost desperately–when the guard of the train came running by and paused to thrust his head in at the open doorway to explain.