new friends could not relieve, feeling, as he must, that it was dictated
by pity only. Then it was that he first learned that his experience had
been a yet more marvelous one than he had supposed. Edith Leete was no
other than the great-granddaughter of Edith Bartlett, his betrothed, who,
after long mourning her lost lover, had at last allowed herself to be
consoled. The story of the tragical bereavement which had shadowed her
early life was a family tradition, and among the family heirlooms were
letters from Julian West, together with a photograph which represented so
handsome a youth that Edith was illogically inclined to quarrel with her
great-grandmother for ever marrying anybody else. As for the young man's
picture, she kept it on her dressing table. Of course, it followed that
the identity of the tenant of the subterranean chamber had been fully
known to his rescuers from the moment of the discovery; but Edith, for
reasons of her own, had insisted that he should not know who she was till
she saw fit to tell him. When, at the proper time, she had seen fit to do
this, there was no further question of loneliness for the young man, for
how could destiny more unmistakably have indicated that two persons were
meant for each other?

His cup of happiness now being full, he had an experience in which it
seemed to be dashed from his lips. As he lay on his bed in Dr. Leete's
house he was oppressed by a hideous nightmare. It seemed to him that he
opened his eyes to find himself on his bed in the underground chamber
where the mesmerizer had put him to sleep. Sawyer was just completing the
passes used to break the hypnotic influence. He called for the morning
paper, and read on the date line May 31, 1887. Then he knew that all this
wonderful matter about the year 2000, its happy, care-free world of
brothers and the fair girl he had met there were but fragments of a
dream. His brain in a whirl, he went forth into the city. He saw
everything with new eyes, contrasting it with what he had seen in the