That I had said something, in the act of waking, I felt sure: thehoarse stifled cry was still ringing in my ears, even if the startledlook of my fellow-traveler had not been evidence enough: but what couldI possibly say by way of apology?

"I hope I didn't frighten you?" I stammered out at last."I have no idea what I said. I was dreaming."

"You said 'Uggug indeed!'" the young lady replied, with quivering lipsthat would curve themselves into a smile, in spite of all her effortsto look grave. "At least--you didn't say it--you shouted it!"

"I'm very sorry," was all I could say, feeling very penitent andhelpless. "She has Sylvie's eyes!" I thought to myself, half-doubtingwhether, even now, I were fairly awake. "And that sweet look ofinnocent wonder is all Sylvie's too. But Sylvie hasn't got that calmresolute mouth nor that far-away look of dreamy sadness, like one thathas had some deep sorrow, very long ago--" And the thick-comingfancies almost prevented my hearing the lady's next words.

"If you had had a 'Shilling Dreadful' in your hand," she proceeded,"something about Ghosts or Dynamite or Midnight Murder--one couldunderstand it: those things aren't worth the shilling, unless they giveone a Nightmare. But really--with only a medical treatise,you know--" and she glanced, with a pretty shrug of contempt,at the book over which I had fallen asleep.

Her friendliness, and utter unreserve, took me aback for a moment;yet there was no touch of forwardness, or boldness, about the child forchild, almost, she seemed to be: I guessed her at scarcely overtwenty--all was the innocent frankness of some angelic visitant,new to the ways of earth and the conventionalisms or, if you will,the barbarisms--of Society. "Even so," I mused, "will Sylvie look andspeak, in another ten years."

"You don't care for Ghosts, then," I ventured to suggest, unless theyare really terrifying?"

"Quite so," the lady assented. "The regular Railway-Ghosts--I meanthe Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature--are very poor affairs.I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, 'Their tameness isshocking to me'! And they never do any Midnight Murders.They couldn't 'welter in gore,' to save their lives!"

"'Weltering in gore' is a very expressive phrase, certainly.Can it be done in any fluid, I wonder?"

"I think not," the lady readily replied--quite as if she had thoughtit out, long ago. "It has to be something thick. For instance, youmight welter in bread-sauce. That, being white, would be more suitablefor a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!"

"You have a real good terrifying Ghost in that book?" I hinted.

"How could you guess?" she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness,and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a notunpleasant thrill like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the'uncanny' coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subjectof her studies.

It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article Bread Sauce.'

I returned the book, looking, I suppose, a little blank, as the ladylaughed merrily at my discomfiture. "It's far more exciting than someof the modern ghosts, I assure you! Now there was a Ghost lastmonth--I don't mean a real Ghost in in Supernature--but in aMagazine. It was a perfectly flavourless Ghost. It wouldn't havefrightened a mouse! It wasn't a Ghost that one would even offer a chairto!"

"Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have theiradvantages after all!", I said to myself. "Instead of a bashful youthand maiden, gasping out monosyllables at awful intervals, here we havean old man and a child, quite at their ease, talking as if they hadknown each other for years! Then you think," I continued aloud,"that we ought sometimes to ask a Ghost to sit down? But have we anyauthority for it? In Shakespeare, for instance--there are plenty ofghosts there--does Shakespeare ever give the stage-direction 'handschair to Ghost'?"

The lady looked puzzled and thoughtful for a moment: then she almostclapped her hands. "Yes, yes, he does!" she cried."He makes Hamlet say 'Rest, rest, perturbed Spirit!"'

"And that, I suppose, means an easy-chair?"

"An American rocking-chair, I think--"

"Fayfield Junction, my Lady, change for Elveston!" the guard announced,flinging open the door of the carriage: and we soon found ourselves,with all our portable property around us, on the platform.

The accommodation, provided for passengers waiting at this Junction,was distinctly inadequate--a single wooden bench, apparently intendedfor three sitters only: and even this was already partially occupied bya very old man, in a smock frock, who sat, with rounded shoulders anddrooping head, and with hands clasped on the top of his stick so as tomake a sort of pillow for that wrinkled face with its look of patientweariness.

"Come, you be off!" the Station-master roughly accosted the poor oldman. "You be off, and make way for your betters! This way, my Lady!"he added in a perfectly different tone. "If your Ladyship will take aseat, the train will be up in a few minutes." The cringing servility ofhis manner was due, no doubt, to the address legible on the pile ofluggage, which announced their owner to be "Lady Muriel Orme, passengerto Elveston, via Fayfield Junction."

As I watched the old man slowly rise to his feet, and hobble a fewpaces down the platform, the lines came to my lips:-

"From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd;A hundred years had flung their snowsOn his thin locks and floating beard."

[Image...'Come, you be off!']

But the lady scarcely noticed the little incident. After oneglance at the 'banished man,' who stood tremulously leaning on hisstick, she turned to me. "This is not an American rocking-chair, by anymeans! Yet may I say," slightly changing her place, so as to make roomfor me beside her, "may I say, in Hamlet's words, 'Rest, rest--'"she broke off with a silvery laugh.

"--perturbed Spirit!"' I finished the sentence for her. "Yes, thatdescribes a railway-traveler exactly! And here is an instance of it,"I added, as the tiny local train drew up alongside the platform,and the porters bustled about, opening carriage-doors--one of themhelping the poor old man to hoist himself into a third-class carriage,while another of them obsequiously conducted the lady and myself into afirst-class.

She paused, before following him, to watch the progress of the otherpassenger. "Poor old man!" she said. "How weak and ill he looks!It was a shame to let him be turned away like that. I'm very sorry--"At this moment it dawned on me that these words were not addressed to me,but that she was unconsciously thinking aloud. I moved away a fewsteps, and waited to follow her into the carriage, where I resumed theconversation.

"Shakespeare must have traveled by rail, if only in a dream:'perturbed Spirit' is such a happy phrase."

"'Perturbed' referring, no doubt," she rejoined, "to the sensationalbooklets peculiar to the Rail. If Steam has done nothing else, it hasat least added a whole new Species to English Literature!"

"No doubt of it," I echoed. "The true origin of all our medicalbooks--and all our cookery-books--"

"No, no!" she broke in merrily. "I didn't mean our Literature!We are quite abnormal. But the booklets--the little thrilling romances,where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty--surely they are due to Steam?"

"And when we travel by Electricity if I may venture to develop yourtheory we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder andthe Wedding will come on the same page."

"A development worthy of Darwin!", the lady exclaimed enthusiastically."Only you reverse his theory. Instead of developing a mouse into anelephant, you would develop an elephant into a mouse!" But here weplunged into a tunnel, and I leaned back and closed my eyes for amoment, trying to recall a few of the incidents of my recent dream.

"I thought I saw--" I murmured sleepily: and then the phrase insistedon conjugating itself, and ran into "you thought you saw--he thoughthe saw--" and then it suddenly went off into a song:--

"He thought he saw an Elephant,That practised on a fife:He looked again, and found it wasA letter from his wife.'At length I realise,' he said,"The bitterness of Life!'"

And what a wild being it was who sang these wild words! A Gardener heseemed to be yet surely a mad one, by the way he brandished hisrake--madder, by the way he broke, ever and anon, into a franticjig--maddest of all, by the shriek in which he brought out the lastwords of the stanza!

[Image....The gardener]

It was so far a description of himself that he had the feet ofan Elephant: but the rest of him was skin and bone: and the wisps ofloose straw, that bristled all about him, suggested that he had beenoriginally stuffed with it, and that nearly all the stuffing had comeout.

Sylvie and Bruno waited patiently till the end of the first verse.Then Sylvie advanced alone (Bruno having suddenly turned shy)and timidly introduced herself with the words "Please, I'm Sylvie!"

"And who's that other thing?', said the Gardener.

"What thing?" said Sylvie, looking round. "Oh, that's Bruno.He's my brother."

"Was he your brother yesterday?" the Gardener anxiously enquired.

"Course I were!" cried Bruno, who had gradually crept nearer,and didn't at all like being talked about without having his share inthe conversation.

"Ah, well!" the Gardener said with a kind of groan. "Things change so,here. Whenever I look again, it's sure to be something different!Yet I does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early at five--"

"If I was oo," said Bruno, "I wouldn't wriggle so early. It's as bad asbeing a worm!" he added, in an undertone to Sylvie.

"But you shouldn't be lazy in the morning, Bruno," said Sylvie."Remember, it's the early bird that picks up the worm!"

"It may, if it likes!" Bruno said with a slight yawn. "I don't likeeating worms, one bit. I always stop in bed till the early bird haspicked them up!"

"I wonder you've the face to tell me such fibs!" cried the Gardener.

To which Bruno wisely replied "Oo don't want a face to tell fibswiz--only a mouf."

Sylvie discreetly changed the subject. "And did you plant all theseflowers?" she said.

"What a lovely garden you've made! Do you know, I'd like to live herealways!"

"In the winter-nights--" the Gardener was beginning.

"But I'd nearly forgotten what we came about!" Sylvie interrupted."Would you please let us through into the road? There's a poor oldbeggar just gone out--and he's very hungry--and Bruno wants to givehim his cake, you know!"

"It's as much as my place is worth!', the Gardener muttered, taking akey from his pocket, and beginning to unlock a door in the garden-wall.

"How much are it wurf? "Bruno innocently enquired.

But the Gardener only grinned. "That's a secret!" he said. "Mind youcome back quick!" he called after the children, as they passed out intothe road. I had just time to follow them, before he shut the dooragain.

We hurried down the road, and very soon caught sight of the old Beggar,about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and the children at once set offrunning to overtake him.

Lightly and swiftly they skimmed over the ground, and I could not inthe least understand how it was I kept up with them so easily. But theunsolved problem did not worry me so much as at another time it mighthave done, there were so many other things to attend to.

The old Beggar must have been very deaf, as he paid no attentionwhatever to Bruno's eager shouting, but trudged wearily on, neverpausing until the child got in front of him and held up the slice ofcake. The poor little fellow was quite out of breath, and could onlyutter the one word "Cake!" not with the gloomy decision with which HerExcellency had so lately pronounced it, but with a sweet childishtimidity, looking up into the old man's face with eyes that loved'all things both great and small.'

The old man snatched it from him, and devoured it greedily, as somehungry wild beast might have done, but never a word of thanks did hegive his little benefactor--only growled "More, more!" and glared atthe half-frightened children.

"There is no more!", Sylvie said with tears in her eyes."I'd eaten mine. It was a shame to let you be turned away like that.I'm very sorry--"

I lost the rest of the sentence, for my mind had recurred, with a greatshock of surprise, to Lady Muriel Orme, who had so lately uttered thesevery words of Sylvie's--yes, and in Sylvie's own voice, and withSylvie's gentle pleading eyes!

"Follow me!" were the next words I heard, as the old man waved hishand, with a dignified grace that ill suited his ragged dress, over abush, that stood by the road side, which began instantly to sink intothe earth. At another time I might have doubted the evidence of myeyes, or at least have felt some astonishment: but, in this strangescene, my whole being seemed absorbed in strong curiosity as to whatwould happen next.

When the bush had sunk quite out of our sight, marble steps were seen,leading downwards into darkness. The old man led the way, and weeagerly followed.

The staircase was so dark, at first, that I could only just see theforms of the children, as, hand-in-hand, they groped their way downafter their guide: but it got lighter every moment, with a strangesilvery brightness, that seemed to exist in the air, as there were nolamps visible; and, when at last we reached a level floor, the room,in which we found ourselves, was almost as light as day.

It was eight-sided, having in each angle a slender pillar, round whichsilken draperies were twined. The wall between the pillars was entirelycovered, to the height of six or seven feet, with creepers, from whichhung quantities of ripe fruit and of brilliant flowers, that almost hidthe leaves. In another place, perchance, I might have wondered to seefruit and flowers growing together: here, my chief wonder was thatneither fruit nor flowers were such as I had ever seen before.Higher up, each wall contained a circular window of coloured glass;and over all was an arched roof, that seemed to be spangled all overwith jewels.

With hardly less wonder, I turned this way and that, trying to make outhow in the world we had come in: for there was no door: and all thewalls were thickly covered with the lovely creepers.

"We are safe here, my darlings!" said the old man, laying a hand onSylvie's shoulder, and bending down to kiss her. Sylvie drew backhastily, with an offended air: but in another moment, with a glad cryof "Why, it's Father!", she had run into his arms.

[Image...A beggar's palace]

"Father! Father!" Bruno repeated: and, while the happy childrenwere being hugged and kissed, I could but rub my eyes and say"Where, then, are the rags gone to?"; for the old man was now dressedin royal robes that glittered with jewels and gold embroidery,and wore a circlet of gold around his head.