If the old man appreciated the intonation in the voice of his questioner he did not show it.
"Have no fear, master," he said. "What I do, I do by command of the Teacher. No harm will come to you."
Joseph suddenly seemed to wake from his dream. A great sense of irritation, almost of anger, began to animate him. He was once more the old Joseph—the man who had walked with Hampson in the Commercial Road before the accident had struck him down.
"That's all very well," he said sharply. "Perhaps no harm will happen to me, but will Mr. Lluellyn Lys come to me? That is the question in which I am particularly interested at this moment. I don't know in the least where I am! I am too feeble to walk more than a few yards. I can't stay here alone until—"
He found that he was speaking to the air, the white and lonely mist. Suddenly, without a word of answer, his strange conductors had melted away—withdrawn and vanished.
He was alone on a mountain-top in Wales, surrounded by an impenetrable curtain of mist, unable to move in any direction. What was all this?
Was he the victim of some colossal trick, some cruel hoax, some immense and indefensible practical joke?
It was difficult to believe it, and yet he cursed his folly in accepting this strange invitation to Wales. What a foolish and unconsidered business it all seemed—now that he sat alone in the white stillness, the terrible solitude.
Still, mad as the action seemed to him now, he remembered that it was the result of a long chain of coincidences. Certainly—yes, of that there could be no doubt—he seemed to have been led to this place. Something stronger than himself had influenced him. No, he was not here by chance—
Had he fallen asleep?