第 4 页

that character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not have

discovered himself naked.

Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was

no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly

he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some

processes of thought reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that

peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion.

It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not.

A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the

moment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding then

silently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly.

They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty

taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.

"That--that makes me feel better," he said hoarsely, and there were

murmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made to

speak again, and again he could not.

He pressed his throat and tried a third time.

"How long?" he asked in a level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly

at the others.

"How long?"

"A very long time."

"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some

years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.

But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"

He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his

knuckles and sat waiting for an answer.

They spoke in undertones.

"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"

"Very much more than that."

"Morel"

"More."

He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the

muscles of his face. He looked his question.

"Many years," said the man with the red beard.

Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from

his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes

tight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thing

to another.

"How many years?" he asked.

"You must be prepared to be surprised."

"Well?"

"More than a gross of years."

He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"

Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about

"decimal" he did not catch.

"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like that.

Tell me."

Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than

a couple of centuries."

_"What?"_ he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who

says--? What was that? A couple of centuries!"

"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."

Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast

repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.

"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf

opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"

They said nothing.

"You--did you say--?"

"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the red

beard.

There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had

heard was indeed true.

"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trances

don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon

me! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of

Cornwall--?"

His voice failed him.

The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in

history, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.

"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of

Cornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. There

is a house there still. I have been there."

"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was

it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't

exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."

He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than two hundred years!"

He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold

within him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, every

human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be

dead."

They did not answer him.

"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State.

High and low, rich and poor, one with another--"

"Is there England still?"

"That's a comfort! Is there London?" E "This _is_ London, eh? And you

are my assistant--custodian; assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?

Assistant-custodians to?"

He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't

talk. Be quiet. Let me--"

He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another

little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. It was

almost immediately sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weep

naturally and refreshingly.

Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears,

a little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced

hysterically and covered up his face again.

After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his knees

in almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found him

on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick

domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. "What are

you doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will

suffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed?

All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told.

Has he been told anything?"

The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham

looking over his shoulder saw approaching a very short, fat, and

thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very

thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his

nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable

expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard

returned to the man with the flaxen beard. "These others," he said in a

voice of extreme irritation. "You had better go."

"Go?" said the red-bearded man.

"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."

The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at

Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked

straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. And

then came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wall

rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again,

and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robed

man with the flaxen beard.

For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham,

but proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate--upon

the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases only

partially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matter

of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently

profoundly excited.

"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again

and again. "You must not confuse his mind."

His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper

with an ambiguous expression.

"Feel queer?" he asked.

"Very."

"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"

"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."

"I suppose so, now."

"In 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 back.

"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In

a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then

I can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon

enough."

"But those voices. They were shouting--?"

"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I

don't know what it is. I know nothing."

A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote

noises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliances

in the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball of

crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the

wall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like a

curtain, and he stood waiting.

Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the

restoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couch

and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credit

his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.

The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did

so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset

man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a

tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.

"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory

gesture. "It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot

understand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapid

as possible?" he said to the tailor.

The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the

bed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You will

find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his

brows at the thickset man.

He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant

fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period

essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the

hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a

little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the

knob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion

on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of

bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment,"

he said.

The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.

"We have very little time," he said.

"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think of

this?"

"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.

"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but

this is our modern development See here." The little figure repeated

its evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click

another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to

the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice

towards the lift as he did these things.

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of the

Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a

complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into