The Argosy — page 393: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

370 Three Minutes to Twelve. on a lofty hill. By my side stood a veiled figure, who, with a com- manding gesture, motioned me towards the town of L——, which lay in the far distance. ‘Then I awoke. Of course I explained the thing to myself easily enough. I had been a good deal engaged in the neighbourhood of the place and had a large venture more or less remotely connected with it. Still the dream was so vivid that I could not dismiss it from my thoughts during the whole of the day, and when I went to bed at night I wondered if it would again visit me. It did come again: precisely the same dream in precisely the same manner. Once more I found a convincing explanation. Doubtless I had been thinking too much about the first dream, and this had given rise to the second. But my explanation did not convince me in the least; again I was haunted by the thing throughout the day, and when I came home at night my preoccupation was so evident that it attracted the attention of my wife. She questioned me upon the cause, and, only too thankful to unbosom myself of what was now almost a trouble, I told her about the dream and its repetition. She had the tact not to laugh at me, but was evidently little im- pressed by the narrative. The third night it came again, if anything, more vividly and startlingly than before. This time I was utterly unhinged; the pale face that fronted me in the looking-glass was hardly recognisable for my own. I went down to breakfast, filled with a foreboding of some misfortune—bad news in my letters—I knew not what. The maid entered with the letter-bag. “There,” said my wife, passing me a letter on which was the L—— postmark, ‘ That breaks your dream, John.” I opened it hurriedly. It was from the agent requesting me to meet him at L—— that day at one o’clock, to arrange a difficulty that had arisen in the performance of his contract. I was intensely relieved. Here was an opportunity to go to L——, and perhaps the very fact of going would put me right. ‘There were two fast trains to L in the morning, but I decided to go by the first, regardless of the fact that I should have some hours to wait. So I found myself shortly in a first-class compartment, speeding away to- wards my destination. The carriage was full. Pipes exhaled their fragrance, newspapers were turned and flattened, and there was that leisurely kind of morning conversation that prevails among men going off by an early train to their day’s work. I soon discovered that I had fallen amongst a party of barristers, and their chief topic was a peculiarly interesting case,which was to be finished to-day at the L—-— assizes. ‘He must sum up against the prisoner,” said a gentleman with a fat, florid face, and long sandy whiskers, who wore a light overcoat and shepherd’s plaid trousers. ‘The defence was a complete failure and deserved to be.” GOMiicbookszco %