CHAPTER V

AUSTYN'S GOSPEL


"He did not see the ghost, you say; he only felt it? I should think he
did--on his chest. I never heard of a clearer case of nightmare. You
must be careful whom you tell the story to, old chap; for at the first
go-off it sounds as if it was not merely eating too much that was the
matter. It was, however, indigestion sure enough. No wonder! If a man of
his age who takes no exercise will eat three square meals a day, what
else can he expect? And Mallet is rather liberal with her cream."

Atherley it was, of course, who propounded this simple interpretation of
the night's alarms, as he sat in his smoking-room reviewing his
trout-flies after an early breakfast we had taken with the Canon.

"You always account for the mechanism, but not for the effect. Why
should indigestion take that mental form?"

"Why, because indigestion constantly does in sleep, and out of it as
well, for that matter. A nightmare is not always a sense of oppression
on the chest only; it may be an overpowering dread of something you
dream you see. Indigestion can produce, waking or asleep, a very good
imitation of what is experienced in a blue funk. And there is another
kind of dream which is produced by fasting--that, I need hardly say, I
have never experienced. Indeed, I don't dream."