They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.

"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall
be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be difficult
to--_wire_ to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't trouble
about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the
important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the word was
sir, but this man pronounced it "_Sire_.")

"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.

It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar dress
knew what they were about. Yet they were odd and the room was odd. It
seemed he was in some newly established place. He had a sudden flash of
suspicion! Surely this wasn't some hall of public exhibition! If it was
he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely had that
character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not have
discovered himself naked.

Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was
no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly
he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some
processes of thought-reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that
peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion. It
seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not. A
queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the