; the curtains were drawn; the reading-lamp, with
its ample green shade, was on the table--a more comfortable room no man
could have found to receive him after a long walk. Reclining at his
ease in his chair, Amelius thought of ringing for some restorative
brandy-and-water. While he was thinking, he fell asleep; and, while he
slept, he dreamed.

Was it a dream?

He certainly saw the library--not fantastically transformed, but just
like what the room really was. So far, he might have been wide awake,
looking at the familiar objects round him. But, after a while, an event
happened which set the laws of reality at defiance. Simple Sally, miles
away in the Home, made her appearance in the library, nevertheless. He
saw the drawn curtains over the window parted from behind; he saw the
girl step out from them, and stop, looking at him timidly. She was
clothed in the plain dress that he had bought for her; and she looked
more charming in it than ever. The beauty of health claimed kindred now,
in her pretty face, with the beauty of youth: the wan cheeks had begun
to fill out, and the pale lips were delicately suffused with their
natural rosy red. Little by little her first fears seemed to subside.
She smiled, and softly crossed the room, and stood at his side. After
looking at him with a rapt expression of tenderness and delight, she
laid her hands on the arm of the chair, and said, in the quaintly quiet
way which he remembered so well, "I want to kiss you." She bent over
him, and kissed him with the innocent freedom of a child. Then she
raised herself again, and looked backwards and forwards between Amelius
and the lamp. "The firelight is the best," she said. Darkness fell over
the room as she spoke; he saw her no more; he heard her no more. A blank
interval followed; there flowed over him the oblivion of perfect sleep.
His next conscious sensation was a feeling of cold--he shivered, and
woke.

The impression of the dream was in his mind at the moment of waking. He
started as he raised himself in the chair. Was he dreaming still? No; he
was certainly awake. And, as certainly, the room was dark!

He looked and looked. It was not to be denied, or explained away. There
was the fire burning low, and leaving the room chilly--and there,
just visible on the table, in the flicker of the dying flame, was the
extinguished lamp!

He mended the fire, and put his hand on the bell to ring for Toff, and
thought better of it. What need h