’It happened just to the purpose that I should meet him there, didn’t it?  And when I reached the station and learnt that I could not get on by train my foot seemed better.  I started off to walk home, and went about five miles along a path beside the railway.  It then struck me that I might not be fit for anything to-day if I walked and aggravated the bothering foot, so I looked for a place to sleep at.  There was no available village or inn, and I eventually got the keeper of a gate-house, where a lane crossed the line, to take me in.’

They proceeded with their breakfast.  Owen yawned.

’You didn’t get much sleep at the gate-house last night, I’m afraid, Owen,’ said his sister.

’To tell the truth, I didn’t.  I was in such very close and narrow quarters.  Those gate-houses are such small places, and the man had only his own bed to offer me.  Ah, by-the-bye, Cythie, I have such an extraordinary thing to tell you in connection with this man!—­by Jove, I had nearly forgotten it!  But I’ll go straight on.  As I was saying, he had only his own bed to offer me, but I could not afford to be fastidious, and as he had a hearty manner, though a very queer one, I agreed to accept it, and he made a rough pallet for himself on the floor close beside me.  Well, I could not sleep for my life, and I wished I had not stayed there, though I was so tired.  For one thing, there were the luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the night.  But worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and occasionally struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking against the post of the bedstead and making it tremble.  My condition was altogether so unsatisfactory that at last I awoke him, and asked him what he had been dreaming about for the previous hour, for I could get no sleep at all.  He begged my pardon for disturbing me, but a name I had casually let fall that evening had led him to think of another stranger he had once had visit him, who had also accidentally mentioned the same name, and some very strange incidents connected with that meeting.  The affair had occurred years and years ago; but what I had said had made him think and dream about it as if it were but yesterday.  What was the word?  I said.  “Cytherea,” he said.  What was the story?  I asked then.  He then told me that when he was a young man in London he borrowed a few pounds to add to a few he had saved up, and opened a little inn at Hammersmith.  One evening, after the inn had been open about a couple of months, every idler in the neighbourhood ran off to Westminster.  The Houses of Parliament were on fire.