“My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change.  I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind.  I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase, with the money I had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise.  I lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days.  I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord vociferating in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman’s gnarled face as she asked for her cat.  I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling ’Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ at my father’s open grave.

“‘You also,’ said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave.  I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered droning and sniffing through the ritual.  I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me.  I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came flying after me in spadefuls.  Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me.  I made convulsive struggles and awoke.

“The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds.  I sat up, and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be.  Then, as recollection came back to me, I heard voices in conversation.

“Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching.  I scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me.  I suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away.  ‘Who’s that?’ cried one, and ‘Stop, there!’ shouted the other.  I dashed around a corner and came full tilt—­a faceless figure, mind you!—­on a lanky lad of fifteen.  He yelled and I bowled him over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself behind a counter.  In another moment feet went running past and I heard voices shouting, ’All hands to the doors!’ asking what was ‘up,’ and giving one another advice how to catch me.

“Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits.  But—­odd as it may seem—­it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes as I should have done.  I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in them, and that ruled me.  And then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of ‘Here he is!’