He surveyed me and meditated gravely. “I woke up,” he said, feeling his way in his memory. “And I.” “I lost my way—I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog.” He stared at his foot, remembering. “Something to do with a comet. I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I must have pitched into this lane. Look!” He pointed with his head. “There’s a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over that out of the field above.” He scrutinized this and concluded. “Yes. . . .” “It was dark,” I said, “and a sort of green gas came out of nothing everywhere. That is the last _I_ remember.” “And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment. Certainly there’s something odd in the air. I was—I was rushing along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I got down——” He held out a triumphant finger. “Ironclads!” “_Now_ I’ve got it! We’d strung our fleet from here to Texel. We’d got right across them and the Elbe mined. We’d lost the _Lord Warden_. By Jove, yes. The _Lord Warden!_ A battleship that cost two million pounds—and that fool Rigby said it didn’t matter! Eleven hundred men went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the North Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes for ‘em—and not one of ‘em had three days’ coal! Now, was that a dream? No! I told a lot of people as much—a meeting was it?—to reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer people—paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of course! We had it all over—a big dinner—oysters!—Colchester. I’d been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn’t seem as though that was—recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!—it was. I got out of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking along the cliff path, because every one said one of their battleships was being chased along the shore. That’s clear! I heard their guns———” He reflected. “Queer I should have forgotten! Did _you_ hear any guns?” I said I had heard them. “Was it last night?” “Late last night. One or two in the morning.” He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. “Even now,” he said, “it’s odd, but the whole of that seems like a silly dream. Do you think there _was_ a _Lord Warden?_ Do you really believe we sank all that machinery—for fun? It was a dream. And yet—it happened.” By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable that I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. “Yes,” I said; “that’s it. One feels one has awakened—from something more than that green gas. As though the other things also—weren’t quite real.” He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. “I made a speech at Colchester,” he said.