He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he looked
again he found the dark trough 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.