I thought I had been sleeping for a long time and had woken before the dawn:  the earth was misty, although the moon was shining; and I was no longer in the temple, but back once more at the edge of the plain.  “They must have fetched me back while I slept,” I thought to myself.  But when I looked round I saw no trace of the officers, nor of the Cossacks, nor of the small house and the garden, and, stranger still, the millet had been reaped and the plain was covered with low stubble, and on it were pitched some curiously-shaped tents, which I saw were guarded by soldiers.  But these soldiers were Chinamen, and yet unlike any Chinamen I had ever seen; for some of them carried halberds, the double-armed halberds of the period of Charles I., and others, halberds with a crescent on one side, like those which were used in the days of Henry VII.  And I then noticed that a whole multitude of soldiers were lying asleep on the ground, armed with two-edged swords and bows and arrows.  And their clothes seemed unfamiliar and brighter than the clothes which Chinese soldiers wear nowadays.

As I wondered what all this meant, a note of music came stealing through the night, and at first it seemed to be the same tune as I heard in the temple before I dropped off to sleep; but presently I was sure that this was a mistake, for the sound was richer and more mellow, and like that of a bell, only of an enchanted bell, such as that which is fabled to sound beneath the ocean.  And the music seemed to rise and fall, to grow clear and full, and just as it was floating nearer and nearer, it died away in a sigh:  but as it did so the distant hills seemed to catch it and to send it back in the company of a thousand echoes, till the whole night was filled and trembling with an unearthly chorus.  The sleeping soldiers gradually stirred and sat listening spellbound to the music.  And in the eyes of the sentries, who were standing as motionless as bronze statues in front of the tents, I could see the tears glistening.  And the whole of the sleeping army awoke from its slumber and listened to the strange sound.  From the tents came men in glittering silks (the Generals, I supposed) and listened also.  The soldiers looked at each other and said no word.  And then all at once, as though obeying some silent word of command given by some unseen captain, one by one they walked away over the plain, leaving their tents behind them.  They all marched off into the east, as if they were following the music into the heart of the hills, and soon, of all that great army which had been gathered together on the plain, not one man was left.  Then the music changed and seemed to grow different and more familiar, and with a start I became aware that I had been asleep and dreaming, and that I was sitting on the temple steps once more in the twilight, and that not far off, round a fire, some soldiers were singing.  It was a dream, and my sleep could not have been a long one, for it was still twilight and the darkness had not yet come.