ey
have taken most of the best fruit to which I was looking forward, but
thank goodness they do not seem to care for pork."

"So am I," said Bickley, who really looked exhausted. "Get the food,
there's a good fellow. We'll talk afterwards."

When we had eaten, somewhat silently, I asked Bickley what he made of
the business; also whither he thought the sleepers had gone.

"I think I can answer the last question," interrupted Bastin. "I expect
it is to a place well known to students of the Bible which even Bickley
mentions sometimes when he is angry. At any rate, they seem to be very
fond of heat, for they wouldn't part from it even in their coffins, and
you will admit that they are not quite natural, although that Glittering
Lady is so attractive as regards her exterior."

Bickley waved these remarks aside and addressed himself to me.

"I don't know what to think of it," he said; "but as the experience is
not natural and everything in the Universe, so far as we know it, has a
natural explanation, I am inclined to the belief that we are suffering
from hallucinations, which in their way are also quite natural. It does
not seem possible that two people can really have been asleep for an
unknown length of time enclosed in vessels of glass or crystal, kept
warm by radium or some such substance, and then emerge from them
comparatively strong and well. It is contrary to natural law."

"How about microbes?" I asked. "They are said to last practically for
ever, and they are living things. So in their case your natural law
breaks down."

"That is true," he answered. "Some microbes in a sealed tube and under
certain conditions do appear to possess indefinite powers of life. Also
radium has an indefinite life, but that is a mineral. Only these people
are not microbes nor are they minerals. Also, experience tells us that
they could not have lived for more than a few months at the outside in
such circumstances as we seemed to find them."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I suggest that we did not really find them at all; that we have all
been dreaming. You know that there are certain gases which produce
illusions, laughing gas is one of them, and that these gases are
sometimes met with in caves. Now there were very peculiar odours in that
place under the statue, which may have worked upon our imaginations in
some such way. Otherwise we are up against a miracle, and, as you know,
I do not believe in miracles."

"I do," said Ba