"A match was drawn across a match-box, and I saw the boy bending over a candle waiting for the wick to catch. For a moment I thought he must be walking in his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said in his own boyish voice:
"'Lost anything?'
"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright with someone, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious of a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my presence in the dining-room at that odd hour of the night.
"Soon he repeated the question: 'Lost anything?'
"'No,' I said, and then I stammered: 'Have you?'
"'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in it.'
"'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'
"'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.
"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I
had had no direct experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humour him and hear his story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and poked the fire into a blaze.