When, after a brief interval, he looked up, it seemed to him that the colour of the water had changed from the pale crystal of the morning to deep blood-red. The trees were changing too, taking strange and undistinguishable shapes, while there came towards him on the breeze a confused murmur as of a multitude of steps and voices.
Again he closed his eyes; again he strove to shake off the leaden weights that held his feet in prison; but it was useless. He looked up to find all the familiar features of the landscape gone. What had been the river was a zone of burning sand over which hung a sky lurid and awful; the confused murmur was still in his ears; but it had drawn nearer, and the crimson cloud that had hung between earth and heaven seemed to be descending and distributing itself in multitudinous forms. Then, in a moment or less, the zone of sand is filled with figures—figures dark of face and threatening of aspect, that brandish steel-bright swords in their hands.
He looks, but he cannot stir. It seems to him in those awful moments that there is more to come—that he is waiting for it. Suddenly it rises—or has it been there all the time and has he not seen it?—the vision of a woman, in white garments, with golden hair and sad, wild eyes. Her face—not as he has ever seen it; but hers. A groan breaks from his lips. 'It is a dream,' he says to himself. 'It is a dream.'
But a sound rises above the fierce cries of the warriors, a sound piercing and shrill; it is the voice of his love, wild with terror, calling out upon his name. Passionately he tries to reach her but he cannot, and all the time, like the wild insulting chorus of fiends, his own words, 'Come to me, and I will make the world a Paradise to you,' are running through his brain.
His limbs are trembling now, and the cold drops of anguish stand upon his brow. 'Oh, God!' he cries, 'I have sinned. Be merciful! I can bear no more!'
Scarcely are the words out of his lips before the blood-red pavement, the fierce faces, and the lurid sky have gone. But she—his love—is still before him, a pale, sweet phantom, with wonder and a wistful tenderness in its eyes.
In that same instant the chain that had bound his limbs is loosened. Crying out 'Grace! Grace!' he dashes forward blindly.
In the next instant our dreamer found himself sprawling on his back upon the grass, two hands of iron holding him down, and a pair of glittering grey eyes above him.
'No, you don't,' said an irate voice, as he tried to release himself. 'No, you don't, sir. If you must commit suicide I can't help it, of course, but it shall not be in my compound. Keep, still, I tell you, madman! I'm not so young as I was, but I'm strong enough to fight you, and, by Jove, if you attempt to stir, down you go again.'
By the time this harangue was over Tom had recognised the features of his captor, realised the absurd nature of his position, and was laughing heartily.