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 awhile and spat, and then the piping,
reminiscent voice resumed:

"The first time they rejected him. I've followed it all."

"Rejected whom?" said Graham. "The Sleeper?"

"Sleeper? _No_. Ostrog. He was terrible--terrible! And he was promised
then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be more
afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust
ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workers
cut each other's throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman
at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies! Robbing!
Darkness! Such a thing hasn't been this gross of years. Eh!--but 'tis ill
on small folks when the great fall out! It's ill."

"Did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?"

"Eh?" said the old man.