youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
says--? What was that? A couple of centuries!"

"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."

Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast
repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.

"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"

They said nothing.

"You--did you say--?"

"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the red
beard.

There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
heard was indeed true.

"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trances
don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon
me! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
Cornwall--?"

His voice failed him.

The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in
history, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.

"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
Cornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. There
is a house there still. I have been there."

"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."

He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than two hundred years!"

He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold
within him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, every
human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be
dead."

They did not answer him.

"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State.
High and low, rich and poor, one with another--"

"Is there England still?"

"That's a comfort! Is there London?" E "This _is_ London, eh? And you
are my assistant--custodian; assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?
Assistant-custodians to?"

He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
talk. Be quiet. Let me--"

He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another
little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. It was
almost immediately sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weep
naturally and refreshingly.

Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears,
a little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred