“Eh?”

“You are wrong about the Sleeper.  I haven’t told you before, but I will tell you now.  You are wrong about the Sleeper.”

“How do you know?  I thought you didn’t know anything—­not even about Pleasure Cities.”

Graham paused.

“You don’t know,” said the old man.  “How are you to know?  It’s very few men—­”

“I am the Sleeper.”

He had to repeat it.

There was a brief pause.  “There’s a silly thing to say, sir, if you’ll excuse me.  It might get you into trouble in a time like this,” said the old man.

Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.

“I was saying I was the Sleeper.  That years and years ago I did, indeed, fall asleep, in a little stone-built village, in the days when there were hedgerows, and villages, and inns, and all the countryside cut up into little pieces, little fields.  Have you never heard of those days?  And it is I—­I who speak to you—­who awakened again these four days since.”

“Four days since!—­the Sleeper!  But they’ve got the Sleeper.  They have him and they won’t let him go.  Nonsense!  You’ve been talking sensibly enough up to now.  I can see it as though I was there.  There will be Lincoln like a keeper just behind him; they won’t let him go about alone.  Trust them.  You’re a queer fellow.  One of these fun pokers.  I see now why you have been clipping your words so oddly, but—­”

He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.

“As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone!  No, you’re telling that to the wrong man altogether.  Eh! as if I should believe.  What’s your game?  And besides, we’ve been talking of the Sleeper.”

Graham stood up.  “Listen,” he said.  “I am the Sleeper.”

“You’re an odd man,” said the old man, “to sit here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort.  But—­”

Graham’s exasperation fell to laughter.  “It is preposterous,” he cried.  “Preposterous.  The dream must end.  It gets wilder and wilder.  Here am I—­in this damned twilight—­I never knew a dream in twilight before—­an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I am myself, and meanwhile—­Ugh!”

He moved in gusty irritation and went striding.  In a moment the old man was pursuing him.  “Eh! but don’t go!” cried the old man.  “I’m an old fool, I know.  Don’t go.  Don’t leave me in all this darkness.”

Graham hesitated, stopped.  Suddenly the folly of telling his secret flashed into his mind.

“I didn’t mean to offend you—­disbelieving you,” said the old man coming near.  “It’s no manner of harm.  Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases you.  ’Tis a foolish trick—­”

Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.

For a time he heard the old man’s hobbling pursuit and his wheezy cries receding.  But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him no more.