One of them, however, I could not recognize. It represented a naked, emaciated man, holding the handle of a door at the end of a long and gorgeous passage. "Good gracious I," I thought, "what is this? What on earth is the story connected with this?" I paused for a moment. "How stupid I am!" I thought. "Of course it was so-and-so and such-and-such."

Then, as is the way of dreams, I became one of the witnesses of the tragedy illustrated in the publisher's circular. The circular and bookstall vanished, and I found myself engaged on a journey. For a week or more I travelled by train with a little black bag, which was examined at many frontiers. At length I found myself in the region of adventure. Two countries were at war: I never leamed their names; in dreams such names are superfluous, and I must distinguish them as the Greater Land and the Lesser Land.

Through all the scenes that I am about to describe, I was with the people of the Greater Land. They were a remarkable mixture of old and new. Their dress was that of five hundred years ago, but their weapons were up to date. The origin of some of their ceremonies was lost in the dim mists of a prehistoric past, but their methods of warfare were those of today.

The war between these two countries had persisted for many months before I arrived upon the scene, and it is not too much to say that I witnessed the closing act of a long-drawn tragedy.

A long succession of actions had been fought, in which the armies of the Lesser Land, though vastly outnumbered, had been frequently victorious, owing to the skill and intrepidity of this officer. He became their commander in chief, and had won, by his resourcefulness and unfailing cheerfulness, not only the respect, but also the devoced love of his fellow countrymen. The war had been waged with bitterncss: it was a war of extermination, and the victories of this hero, whose name like those of the countries engaged, I never learnt, had been marked by a strange peculiarity. In every battle one or more of the Royal House of the Greater Land had fallen. At length the King himself had lost his life, and royalty had vanished from among them.

Meanwhile, these victories had cost the Lesser Land dearly: their resources had become exhausted, and the struggle became more and more unequal. The tide of war had turned. The numbers of the Greater Land at length wore down and finally destroyed the thinned battalions of the Lesser. Their hero maintained the struggle to the last, but shortly before my arrival, he, too, was captured, and, in this war, the fate of all prisoners was death.

He was brought in triumph to their capital, and placed in a small guardroom in the vacant palace of the Royal Family. By order of the government he was detained there and treated with every contumely. The people among whom I found myself were indeed an extraordinary race. Fierce and unscrupulous, they were, nevertheless, capable of a vivid hero-worship, and able to appreciate the greatness of the prisoner whom fate had placed in their hands.

Then came the denouement. One day his guards entered his room, and, with their accustomed violence, stripped him naked. I ought to have said that his room opened upon a long and magnificent passage, at the end of which was a large door leading to the interior of the palace. The doomed man was then commanded by his guards to go, all naked as he was, to the door at the end of the passage, to turn the handle, and to advance into the room beyond.

Then the first of his guards addressed him. Turning to the lost man, "In that room," he said, "you will find the sword."

Then the second spoke. "ln that room," he said, "you will find the sword that is for you."

Then the third spoke. "In that room," he said, "you will feel the weight of the sword that is for you."

The broken and hopeless man went slowly down the long passage. Taking the handle of the door in his hand, he paused for a moment--and I recognized the scene that had been depicted in the publisher's circular.

Slowly he turned the handle, passed into the inner room, and closed the door behind him. Arrived, as he believed, in the chamber of execution, he paused again; then, raising his downcast eyes, he ventured to survey the scene before him. To his astonishment he discovered that the room was empty: no judge or executioner was there: he was absolutely alone.

I saw that he had found himself in a vast, dim chamber, so dim that it was difficult to distinguish the details of what was before him.

As is the way of dreams, he grasped without an effort the meaning of the discipline through which he had passed, and of the scene that lay before him. He had slain their King indeed, but had been purged of the horrible crime. Stripped and sent naked down the passage, he had left his old life and his former self behind him. And now he divined that he, the slayer of their King, had been chosen to fill the vacant throne.

One by one he assumed the robes of royalty. He lifted the heavy sword and girded it on; he set the Crown upon his head, and, taking the Orb and the Scepter in either hand, he passed out through the door by which--a doomed man--he had so lately entered. Once more he slowly passed down the passage, robed in all the habiliments of a King, and bearing the insignia of royalty.

No longer was the passage empty. There, on each side, stood the chancellors and the great officers of state, all waiting to make due obeisance ro the King of the Greater Land as he left his palace to show himself before his people, and to receive the acclamation of the waiting multitudes.