on the balcony and with their backs
to him, gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were
three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft
colourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the
balcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once some
brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the
air perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded like
English, there was a reiteration of "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
shrill cry, and abruptly the three men began laughing.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe.
"When the Sleeper wakes--_When!_"

He turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face
changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned
swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an
expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.

Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.

CHAPTER IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT

Graham's last impression before he fainted was of a clamorous ringing of
bells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life
and death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses,
he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth
at heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed
from his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still about
him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was
altogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been
on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.

Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that
suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting
together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly
closed.

Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly. "Where
am I?"

He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice
seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.

The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a
slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper's ears,
"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
It is quite safe. You have been here some ti