from striking a light, as the sound might awaken him, and listened
attentively.

I wondered much what could be the subject of the sleeper's dream. I grew
more and more puzzled at his words. It is impossible for me to give you
one hundredth part of his conversation here, even if time permitted;
for his utterance was so rapid that he would have outstripped any
shorthand writer.

Some part of his strange colloquy, however, I have retained, as I
fancied that in it I found reference to myself.

"Fools!" he cried with vehemence; "I tell you the prize is sure. I have
him in my power, he _cannot_ escape me. Ye who prize blood rather than
gold, make ready the chasm to receive him. He is one of those fools who
delight in danger, and he will follow me. What think ye? He seeks chasms
and grottoes for the insane pleasure of burdening himself with the dross
which we beings of a higher order tread under foot. Crystals, fossils,
shining stones, the ore of different metals, especially gold and such
trumpery, are trifles that his mind (if such it may be called) revels
in.

"Do you not believe me, my friends? Ha! ha! I wonder not at your
disbelief; ye whose sublime philosophy is nourished in the peaceful
bowels of the earth, and who are therefore unable to comprehend how
there can exist an order of beings so totally degraded and so
approaching the brute, nay, so far surpassing even the brutes themselves
in the grossness of its appetites, as to yearn for the very stones which
form the pavement and the walls of our subterranean palaces.

"Ye, my friends, who never issue from your cells to visit that outer
world, because, forsooth, your eyesight is not formed by nature to
endure the glare which illumines the surface of this globe, how is it
possible that ye should believe that there exist without intelligences
so stunted and depraved? But I tell you, my brothers in philosophy, that
this fool belongs to a race of maniacs, who have long attempted to
invade our peaceful shores, and even succeeded so far as to penetrate
nearly to the roofs of our dwellings--let us be thankful that their
frames are not suited to endure our genial element below--with much
labour, and for the sole purpose of obtaining metal or some such rubbish
out of which they form----

"Tush! I do but waste time in attempting to enumerate the countless uses
to which these madmen turn our paving stones. When ye are more at
leisure, if ye are content, I will relate to you