trembled in his hand.

"What is the matter?" I asked, finally.

"I feel very much upset," he replied, and sank weakly on the hatch. "I
was on that train and--"

I had to jump below to the ice-chest; Auber seemed to have fainted.
Jerry, the skipper, and I applied cold water for five minutes, and then
Auber revived and asked for whiskey.

"I was on the train," he began again, persistently. "Several people,
whom I knew, must have been in the chair-car with me, because I seemed
to be taking part in a conversation. Was there a Pullman on the train?"
he asked, abruptly.

"Yes," I said; "at the end."

The answer seemed to reassure him unhappily. "I was on the train," he
continued, "but I could not think where I had come from. There were
vague recollections of a walk, then of a long drive in the dark. Now I
was on the train, and yet I was somehow not there even now." I poured
out more whiskey, but he pushed it aside absently. "I was not there, nor
was I here; for when I moved, something seemed to be folded about me,
like bedclothes. It was all a kind of duplication, and I could be on the
train or in the other place at will. That is why it seemed confused and
unreal. We were talking about some matter of business. I held a list of
figures that I referred to now and then. Once I leaned forward to look
out of the window; it was just here. I was pointing, and saying to some
one, 'There is my last salt marsh!' when a great shock stopped the
words, and sent me against something in front. For a moment I was
conscious that you were leaning over me. Then I had a strange feeling of
becoming gradually detached, as if from my very self. A weight and a
feeling of bedclothes slipped from me; there was alternate glaring light
and enveloping darkness. Finally the light prevailed, and I found myself
looking up into this hideous awning."

"Well," I said, "that is a very queer dream!"

"Yes; it was white sleep," he replied, slowly; "but something was added
this time." He put his hand on my arm appealingly. "I knew it would
come; I have had the beginnings of that dream before." He spoke as if
from a tragic winding-sheet, a veil spun in the warp of his own fancy
and also in the very woof of Fate; and out of this veil, through which
none of us ever saw, he was stretching his hand to ask of me--what?

I did what I could. Auber consented to come at once to my farm till rest
should partly restore him. We reached here that night. It was just t