was some time in the
following May that I lost Inyati May, 1861. Last year, was it?"

"Last year! Last year!" he repeated as though dazed in fact I could see
that he was absolutely frightened. "Why man, what you tell me is
incredible impossible! If it were true, you have slept for nearly forty
years. For it is now 1900."

And now it was my turn to be amazed, for truly what he had told me was
incredible . . . surely he must be mad himself!

But he went to the door and called the little Portuguese doctor, who
had also been kindness itself to me.

"Aha," he said as he looked me over and felt my pulse, "now you are
well and have sense again, eh? That is good, it is good that you are
strong very strong never have I see so strong a man never! And if you
have not been strong, you would die, for your head it was quite mad!"

"Look here, Doctor Santos," said the Consul, "our friend has forgotten
a lot of what has happened to him, . . there is a long period about
which his mind is a blank months in fact years!"

"That can be if it is the fever, yes! he will remember again. But his
head have been hurt, it is to be seen, that too may make forget, for
months even a year!"

"Forty years?" suggested the Consul tentatively.

"Ah, you joke, my friend!" replied Santos, "that would not be possible,
he is surely not that age himself?"

And laughing, as he thought, at the Consul's joke, the little man gave
me a few instructions that I did not even hear, and left us.

And the Consul, without a word, handed me a newspaper, and a glance at
it was enough to show that he at least had made no mistake, for it was
dated September, 1900.

And now I was like to go crazy again, with the shock and bewilderment.
Forty years! A lifetime lost. My friends would be dead, or old, old
people who had long forgotten me. Of what use would all this wealth be
to me an old and forgotten friendless man. Old! yes, I must be an old,
old man myself. And yet, now the fever had gone, I felt strong and
vigorous indeed, the doctor had said that I was exceptionally strong
and that I was not forty and the Consul too had said I was a "young,
strong man!"

Surely this was pure hallucination . . . but no! the paper was real
enough. And turning it over I saw that indeed I had slept a lifetime,
for although it was in my own tongue, all it referred to was absolutely
strange to me. New inventions, places I had never heard of, nations
even that were unknown to me; it