still dreaming, and the stars visible
through clearing mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge and
reached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the sufferer, before I
was aware of its presence. The flap was cautiously lifted a few inches
and in looked--Joan.

That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his bed of branches. He
recognised her before I could say a word, and uttered a low cry. It was
pain and joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl too was no
longer walking in her sleep, but fully aware of what she was doing. I
was only just able to prevent him springing from his blankets.

"Joan, Joan!" he cried, and in a flash she answered him, "I'm here--I'm
with you always now," and had pushed past me into the tent and flung
herself upon his breast.

"I knew you would come to me in the end," I heard him whisper.

"It was all too big for me to understand at first," she murmured, "and
for a long time I was frightened--"

"But not now!" he cried louder; "you don't feel afraid now of--of
anything that's in me--"

"I fear nothing," she cried, "nothing, nothing!"

I led her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyes
shining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way,
surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as much as
I knew.

"You must talk to-morrow with John Silence," I said gently, leading her
towards her own tent. "He understands everything."

I left her at the door, and as I went back softly to take up my place of
sentry again with the Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn lighting
up the far rim of the sea behind the distant islands.

And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy,
two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly that
I remember them to this very day. For in the tent where I had just left
Joan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly to my ears
the grotesque sounds of the Bo'sun's Mate heavily snoring, oblivious of
all things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney's tent, so still was the
night, where I looked across and saw the lantern's glow, there came to
me, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling of a human
voice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to his God.

CASE III: A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE

"There's a hextraordinary gentleman to see you, sir," said the new man.

"Why 'extraordinary'?" asked Dr. Silence, dra