was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright
with someone, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious of
a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my
presence in the dining-room at that odd hour of the night.

"Soon he repeated the question: 'Lost anything?'

"'No,' I said, and then I stammered: 'Have you?'

"'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in
it.'

"'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'

"'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.

"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had had no direct
experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in
his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at
a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing
as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humour him and hear
his story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
poked the fire into a blaze.

"'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.

"'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that idea.'

"His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite unthinkable to treat
him as the child he really was. In fact, it was a little uncanny, this
man in a child's frame.

"'I was killed there,' he said again.

"'How do you mean killed?' I asked him.

"'Why, killed--murdered. Of course it was years and years ago, I can't
say when; still I remember the room. I suppose it was the room that
reminded me of the incident.'

"'Incident!' I exclaimed.

"'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the existence of
anyone. One makes a fuss about it at the time, of course, but really
when you come to think of it...'

"'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He lit one too, that
child, and began.

"'You know my room is the only modern one in this old house. Nobody
knows why it is modern. The reason is obvious. Of course it was made
modern after I was killed there. The funny thing is that I should have
been put there. I suppose it was done for a purpose, because I--I--'

"He looked at me so fixedly I knew he would catch me if I lied.

"'What,' I asked.

"'Dream.'

"'Yes,' I said, 'that is why you were put there.'

"'I thought so, and yet of all the rooms--but then, of course, no one
knew. Anyhow I did not recognize the room until a