"And that her call for help and her cry of burglars acted as a sort of
hypnotic suggestion with the other sleepers, and they began to be
afflicted with the same nightmare?"

"I don't know that I ever put it to myself so distinctly, but it appears
to me now that I must have reached some such conclusion."

"That is very interesting, very interesting indeed. I beg your pardon.
Please go on," Wanhope courteously entreated.

"I don't remember just where I was," the stranger faltered.

Rulledge returned with an accuracy which obliged us all: "'The porter
merely joined in the general uproar and shouted for the police.'"

"Oh yes," the stranger assented. "Then I didn't know what to do, for a
minute. The porter was a pretty thick-headed darky, but he was
lion-hearted; and his idea was to lay hold of a burglar wherever he
could find him. There were plenty of burglars in the aisle there, or
people that were afraid of burglars, and they seemed to think the porter
had a good idea. They had hold of one another already, and now began to
pull up and down the aisles in a way that reminded me of the
old-fashioned mesmeric lecturers, when they told their subjects that
they were this or that, and set them to acting the part. I remembered
how once when the mesmerist gave out that they were at a horse--race,
and his subjects all got astride of their chairs, and galloped up and
down the hall like a lot of little boys on laths. I thought of that now,
and although it was rather a serious business, for I didn't know what
minute they would come to blows, I couldn't help laughing. The sight was
weird enough. Every one looked like a somnambulist as he pulled and