ality in anything but happiness,' I said.

'It's all a means to that end,' he answered. 'It is good for me, this
dream. I shall be all the happier when I do wake, and I shall love Annie
all the better, I suppose.

'I wish I could take my ifi luck as a dream and have faith only in good
things,' I said.

'All that is good shall abide,' said he, stroking his white beard, 'and
all evil shall vanish as the substance of a dream. In the end the only
realities are God and love and Heaven. To die is just like waking up in
the morning.

'But I know I'm awake,' I said.

'You think you are--that's a part of your dream. Sometimes I think I'm
awake--it all seems so real to me. But I have thought it out, and I am
the only man I meet that knows he is dreaming. When you do wake, in the
morning, you may remember how you thought you came to a certain shop and
made some words with a man as to whether you were both dreaming, and you
will laugh and tell your friends about it. Hold on! I can feel the ship
lurching. I believe I am going to wake.

He sat a moment leaning back in his chair with closed eyes, and a
silence fell upon us in the which I could hear only the faint ticking of
a tall clock that lifted its face out of the gloom beyond me.

'You there?' he whispered presently.

'I am here,' I said.

'Odd!' he muttered. 'I know how it will be--I know how it has been
before. Generally come to some high place and a great fear seizes me. I
slip, I fall--fall--fall, and then I wake.

After a little silence I heard him snoring heavily. He was still leaning
back in his chair. I walked on tiptoe to the door where the boy stood
looking out.

'Crazy?' I whispered.

'Dunno,' said he, smiling.

I went to my room above and wrote my first tale, which was nothing more
or less than some brief account of what I had heard and seen down at
the little shop that evening. I mailed it next day to the Knickerbocker,
with stamps for return if unavailable.

Chapter 34

New York was a crowded city, even then, but I never felt so lonely
anywhere outside a camp in the big woods, The last day of the first week
came, but no letter from Hope. To make an end of suspense I went that
Saturday morning to the home of the Fullers. The equation of my value
had dwindled sadly that week. Now a small fraction would have stood for
it--nay, even the square of it.

Hope and Mrs Fuller had gone to Saratoga, the butler told me. I came
away with some sense of i