sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden idea came to him, and he began fighting his way

  towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came to an end.

  In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that

  not only impeded his movements but made him

  conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was

  scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and

  voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools

  and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to

  vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the

  glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatre walls.

  He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting

  and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceived that a number of

  black-badged men were all about him firing at the rebels below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames.

  Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the

  veil of darkness fell again.

  A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting

  over the seats. "Hullo!" he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching Sleeper's face.

  He stared without any sign of recognition, turned

  to fire, fired, and, shouting, "To hell with the Council!"

  was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham

  that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A

  drop of moisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green

  weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man

  stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and

  darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ran for his life until a step down to

  the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet,

  turned up the gangway and ran on.

  When the sixth star glared he was already close to

  the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the

  swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a corner into absolute night again. He was knocked

  sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He

  found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives

  pressing in one direction. His one thought now was

  their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly, lost ground and then was clear again.

  For some minutes he was running through the darkness along a winding passage, and then he crossed

  some wide and open space, passed down a long incline, and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place.

  Many people were shouting, "They are coming! The guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of the

  fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safe in

  Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!" There

  were women and children in the crowd as well as men.

  Men called names to him. The crowd converged on

  an archway, passed through a short throat and

  emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed

  in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.

  . . . He perceived that he was no longer in a

  crowd. He stopped near the highest step. Before

  him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little kiosk. He went up to this and, stopping in the shadow of its eaves, looked about him panting.

  Everything was vague and gray, but he recognised

  that these great steps were a series of platforms of the

  "ways," now motionless again. The platform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and

  cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by. From their shouts and

  voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the

  fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows.

  From very far away down the street he could hear

  the sound of a struggle. But it was evident to him

  that this was not the street into which the theatre

  opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly

  dropped out of sound and hearing. And--grotesque

  thought!--they were fighting for him!

  For a space he was like a man who pauses in the

  reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestioningly. At that time he had little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge astonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from

  the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory

  leapt these things and took him back to the cascade

  at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap

  filled, and he began to comprehend his position.

  It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the Silent Rooms. At least he had the strange,

  bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of

  half the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the White Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle.

  Frantic development of his world! "I do not understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"

  He had slipped out between the contending parties

  into this liberty of the twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the redclad

  men as busily hunting him, driving the blackbadged

  revolutionists before them.

  At any rate chance had given him a breathing space.

  He could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and

  watch the course of things. His eye followed up the

  intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light of day. In a little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing had already dried upon him from the snow.

  He wandered for miles along these twilight ways,

  speaking to no one, accosted by no one--a dark

  figure among dark figures--the coveted man out of

  the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of half the world. Wherever there were lights or dense

  crowds, or exceptional excitement he was afraid of

  recognition, and watched and turned back or went up

  and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or higher level. And

  though he came on no more fighting, the whole city

  stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a

  marching multitude of men that swept the street.

  Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part

  they were men, and they carried what he judged were

  weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was

  concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away

  from the fighting--so far as he could judge. He

  went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark.

  After a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at last the Titanic streets became deserted. The

  frontges of the buildings grew plain and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacant warehouses.

  Solitude crept upon him--his pace slackened.

  He became aware of a growing fatigue. At times

  he would turn aside and seat himself on one of the

  numerous seats of the upper ways. But a feverish

  restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in his struggle, would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggle on his behalf alone?

  And then in a desolate place came the shock of an

  earthquake--a roaring and thundering--a mighty

  wind of cold air pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a

  sieries of gigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote roofs into the middle

  gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, and in

  the distance were shouts and running. He, too, was

  startled to an aimless activity, and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back.

  A man came running towards him. His self-control

  returned. "What have they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and before Graham could speak he had hurried on.

  The great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now

  bright with day. He noted many strange features,

  understanding none at the time; he even spelt out

  many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But

  what profits it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--Little Side?" Grotesque thought, that in all

  probability some or all of these cliff-like houses were his!

  The perversity of his experience came to him vividly.

  In actual fact he had made such a leap in time

  as romancers have imagined again and again. And

  that fact realised, he had been prepared, his mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. And no

  spectacle, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic

  shadows and veils of darkness. Somewhere through

  the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him.

  Would he, after all, be killed before he saw? It might be that even at the next shadowy corner his destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longing

  to know, arose in him.

  He became fearful of corners. It seemed to him

  that there was safety in concealment. Where could

  he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned?

  At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one

  of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there.

  He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes.

  Suppose when he looked again he found the dark through of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice, gone? Suppose he were to discover the whole story

  of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting

  multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a

  phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream. It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so

  reasonless. Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this saner world regard him as Owner and

  Master?

  So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked

  again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some

  familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home.

  But fact takes no heed of human hopes. A squad

  of men with a black banner tramped athwart the

  nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose

  that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face.

  "It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face upon his hands.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING

  He was startled by a cough close at hand.

  He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small,

  hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.

  "Have ye any news? " asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man.

  Graham hesitated." None," he said.

  "I stay here till the lights come again," said the old man." These blue scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere."

  Graham's answer was inarticulate assent. He tried

  to see the old man but the darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin.

  "Dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly.

  "Dark and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers."

  "That's hard," ventured Graham. "That's hard on you."

  "Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad. War and fighting. The

  police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don't they

  bring some negroes to protect us? . . . No more

  dark passages for me. I fell over a dead man."

  "You're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of the right sort," and peered frankly.

  He rose suddenly and came towards Graham.

  Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactoy. The old

  man sat down as if relieved to be no longer alone.

  "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead Iying there--men, strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God

  knows where they are tonight."

  The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they are tonight."

  Graham stood revolving a question that should not

  betray his ignorance. Again the old man's voice

  ended the pause.

  "This Ostrog will win," he said. "He will win. And what the world will be like under him no one can

  tell. My sons are under the wind-vanes, all three.

  One of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a

  while. His mistress! Were not common people.

  Though they've sent me to wander tonight and take

  my chance. . . . I knew what was going on. Before

  most people. But this darkness! And to fall

  over a dead body suddenly in the dark!"

  His wheezy breathing could be heard.

  "Ostrog!" said Graham.

  "The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice.

  Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the people," he hazarded.

  "Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've

  had their time. Eh! They should have kept to the

  clever ones. But twice they held election. And

  Ostrog. And now it has burst out and nothing can

  stay it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected

  Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his rages at

  the time--he was terrible. Heaven save them! For

  nothing on earth can now, he has raised the Labour

  Companies upon them. No one else would have

  dared. All the blue canvas armed and marching! He

  will go through with it. He will go through."

  He was silent for a little while. "This Sleeper," he said, and stopped.

  "Yes," said Graham. "Well?"

  The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came close. "The real Sleeper--"

  "Yes," said Graham.

  "Died years ago."

  "What? " said Graham, sharply.

  "Years ago. Died. Years ago."

  "You don't say so!" said Graham.

  "I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's woke up--they changed in the night. A poor,

  drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I know. I mustn't tell all I know."

  For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my time--but I

  know the man who injected the stimulants and woke

  him again. It was ten to one--wake or kill. Wake

  or kill. Ostrog's way."

  Graham was so astonished at these things that he

  had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his

  words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his

  awakening had not been natural! Was that an old

  man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it?

  Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be

  an impression of some such stimulating effect. It

  dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky

  encounter, that at last he might learn something of

  the new age. The old man wheezed a while and spat,

 

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