in.

"It was queer," he said doubtfully, and Carrick bent his head in
eagerness to listen.

"You've been hypnotised before, often enough. What was queer?"

"Hypnotism is unconsciousness, so far as I'm concerned," said Mr.
Newman. "But this--wasn't! Not dreams, either; the thing was so
absolutely real."

"Go on," said Carrick, as he paused to ponder.

"I felt myself going off, you know, just as usual--the mistiness, the
reposefulness, the last moment when one would rebel if one could--but
one can't; that was all ordinary. And then came the blank, that
second of utter emptiness, as though one were alone in the wilderness
of outer space, and light were not yet created. As a rule, that ends
it; one's asleep then. But this time I wasn't. It seemed--it sort of
dawned toward me----" Mr. Newman groped for a word which eluded him,
with a face that brooded heavily.

"What did?" demanded Carrick.

"It was a lightness, first of all, a thinning of the dark, that grew
and broadened till it was like a thing coming at me--like something
thrown at me. And suddenly it was all about me, and I was in it, and
it was daylight--just ordinary daylight, you know. There was a white,
flat road, with a hedge on one side and a low leaning fence on the
other, and over the fence there were fields; and I was walking along
by the roadside, with the thick powdery dust kicking up from under my
feet as I went."

He paused. "Yes?" cried Carrick. "Yes? Yes?"

"I don't remember what I was thinking," said Mr. Newman. "Perhaps I
wasn't thinking. I saw a signpost farther along the road with
something like a long bundle--it was rather like a limp bolster, I
fancy--hanging from it. I was staring toward it, when there came a
noise behind me, like a trumpet being blown, and I turned to see a
coach with four horses come tearing along toward me, with a red-
coated man at the back, blowing a horn. The roof of it was crowded
with people curiously dressed; they all looked down on me as they
came abreast, and their faces had a sort of strange roughness. I saw
them as clearly as all that--a coarseness, it was--a kind of cruel
stupidity. Several of them seemed to be pock-marked, too. It struck
me; I wondered how a coach-load of such people had been gathered
together; and I might have wondered longer; but one of them laughed,
a great neighing guffaw of a laugh, as the coachman swung his whip."

Mr. Newman paused, and his hand floated to his face again.

"It c