In his sleep he had a curious dream. He was in a little boat on the sea, he and a lady with a crown on her head. By that he knew that she was the Queen of Elfland, though she had not, as the ballad said, a skirt of grass-green silk and a velvet mantle, and he wondered why she was in a boat, and what she had done with her horse and all its silver bells. Then suddenly she changed to Mme. de Chaulnes, and, bending over him where he lay in the boat, shook him slightly and said, "Anne, Anne, do you remember now the name of the place at which the expedition was to land?" And he tried hard to remember it, while the boat rocked under him and the water was full of goldfish, but all that he could recall was the name of the shop where the goldfish had been bought yesterday--Hardman. "Think!" said the Queen. "Are you sure you cannot remember it?" Then the sea began to get very rough and dark, and Anne saw that on it were floating feather-beds and shoes with cork heels, as it said in 'Noroway-over-the-foam,' and so he looked over the side of the boat, and down, very far down at the bottom, he could see Sir Patrick Spens lying drowned on the seaweed, with a great many other people . . . and somehow Sir Patrick Spens was also M. le Chevalier de la Vireville. And as he looked he became aware that in some way it was his, Anne-Hilarion's, fault that they were all drowned--or at least that it would be his fault if he did something or other, but the dreadful thing was that he could not find out what that something was which he must avoid. And the Queen--or Mme. de Chaulnes--who was still in the boat, said, laughing: "'Speak ye word in Elflyn-land Ye'll ne'er win back to your ain countrie,'" and then he understood--he _had_ spoken, and that was why M. le Chevalier and all the rest were down at the bottom of the sea. And he began to cry bitterly, begging M. le Chevalier not to be drowned; and because he was so unhappy and so sorry he said boldly to the lady, "No, I cannot remember the name of the place, and if I could I would not tell you!" But with that he woke, and found himself, not in a boat, but in his own bed. It was still dark, and the light was burning, and there was no one in the room. But as he looked anxiously to be sure that this was the case,--anxiously and a little dimly, for there were real tears in his eyes,--he heard the door very gently close. And that, joined to his dream, really terrified Anne-Hilarion, so that he took instinctively to the natural refuge of those of tender years oppressed with terrors in the night, and burying his head under the clothes, lay there quaking with fear, his heart thudding like a live thing in his small body. Who had gone out--or who . . . what . . . had come in? What was in the room with him? . . .