“Rain?” he exclaimed.  “Why, there wasn’t a sign of it an hour ago!”

He drew up the blind and looked out.  The sky was perfectly clear, and a brilliant moon was shining.

“That’s queer!” he murmured.  “I could have sworn I heard it raining.  What in the world could it have been?”

He turned away and put out the candle.  As he approached the bed a curious disinclination to get into it came over him.  Then he heard the same pattering noise again.  He stopped short, and listened more attentively.  It seemed to come from the walls.

A shower of raps, rather like tiny explosions, now sounded all around him.  He leant his head against the wall, and the sound became distincter.  This time there was no mistake about it.  He had never heard anything like it in his life.  He was quite cool, not in the least frightened, and very much on the alert.  The raps continued at intervals for about five minutes.  Then, seeing that it was impossible to solve the mystery, he suddenly jumped into bed.  At that moment the raps ceased.

For nearly an hour he lay awake, wondering.  Certainly he had not been the victim of hallucination.  He was in perfect health, and in full possession of all his faculties.  Indeed his faculties were particularly alive; he had been thinking of something else altogether when the raps first forced themselves upon his consciousness, and afterwards he had listened to them for several minutes with close and critical attention.  No explanation of the strange phenomenon suggested itself in spite of endless theories and speculations.  Could it be mice?  But mice only gnawed and scuttled about; they did not rap.  It was more like crackling than anything else; the noise produced by thousands of faint discharges.  No, it was inexplicable, and he wondered more and more.

Gradually he fell asleep.  How long he slept he didn’t know, but he awoke with a sensation of cold.  Instinctively he put out his hand to pull the coverings closer over him, and found that they seemed to have slipped down somehow, leaving his chest exposed.  Then, warm again, he dozed off once more and dreamt that he was at the pool of Daphnis with Lubin.  How cool and blue the water looked, and how lovely the plunge would be!  But when he was stripped the weather suddenly changed; a chill wind sprang up which made his teeth chatter; and then Lubin—­who somehow wasn’t Lubin but had unaccountably turned into Mr Buskin—­insisted on throwing him into the water, which now looked cold and black.  He struggled furiously, and awoke shivering.

There was not a rag upon him.  Again he stretched out his hand to feel for the clothes, but they had disappeared.  Instinctively he threw himself out of bed and flung open the shutters.  The moon had set, and the first faint gleams of approaching dawn filtered into the room, showing, to his amazement, the bedclothes drawn completely away from the mattress and hanging over the rail at the foot, so as to be