much as the scent of a flower may call up a vision of a high-walled summer garden. Whether any reality lay behind it, I don’t know that I even asked myself; but, on drowsy summer afternoons, dream and reality would float and mingle together, and I would feel intensely happy. As I write I would give much to be able to live over again one of those summer afternoons, when the air hung heavy with the scent of mignonette and roses, and Mrs. Carroll sat reading or working, while I lay in the grass on my back at her feet, and the low sound of the sea splashed through the silence of my sleepy thoughts, and the booming of a bee was the slumberous soul of June or July heat turned to music. In those hours my other world was very, very near. Afterwards I sometimes wondered if there were a place where those lived days were laid away, or if their beauty, happiness and peace, must be quite lost. They had a quality of peacefulness that for me no later days have had: I seemed to dip deep into their cleansing dreamy quiet, as into a clear sea. Other dreams I had, that were not so pleasant, but they came only at night. One I still remember vividly was unfortunately typical of many. I seemed to be walking down a street with another boy, when our attention was attracted by the high, bare wall of a house. There was something, I know not what, about this house, which made it different from its neighbours and aroused our curiosity. We noticed in the wall, almost on the street level, a small window. This window was open, and a fatal fascination drew us to it at once. I watched my friend crawl through, for we knew the house was empty; then I followed him, the opening being just wide enough to admit me. Inside, we found ourselves on a gigantic marble staircase, spiral in form, and winding up and down as far as we could follow it with our eyes. There were no windows except the one we had entered by, and it, somehow, was invisible from inside, yet the place was perfectly lighted. There were no landings, no doors, nothing but this staircase, absolutely uniform in its construction, with low, broad, marble steps which wound down and down, and up and up. The place resembled a vast, still well, and we could not hear the slightest sound as we stood listening. The steps were very shallow, and we ran lightly down. The other boy went more quickly than I did, and in a little while I lost sight of him, though I still heard his footsteps, growing ever fainter, till at last they died away, and the stillness closed in about me with a strange heaviness. I continued to follow him, but all at once I noticed that the stairs I trod were darker and stained with damp. A faint chill odour and feeling of damp and decay rose, too, into my face, and the light was growing dimmer. I knew I was going down into a great vault or tomb far below the ground, a charnel-house, an unknown place of death. I caught sight far below me of a light as of a lamp burning, and