es 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 south-west 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, Church and State. High
and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?"

"That's a comfort! Is there London?"

"This _is_ London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!"

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.
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 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