"And now," I said to myself, when she had gone, "now for my vigil in the garden. In my dream picture only a night ago, I saw myself lying on my back, the man I am seeking kneeling over me, knife in hand. The place where this happened I could not see. But to-night, in another dream picture, I saw the same man crouched low to steal by dead of night through a garden. I wonder whether that garden and the place of my first dream are one and the same? I wonder whether it was good fortune or an evil fate which guided my feet to the opium den yesterday, and brought me and that same man to this house to-night? I wonder whether he or I have met and striven in this or in some pre-existent world? I wonder why it is that only when looking in his eyes do I see these pictures which come and go so strangely in my brain? But most of all, I wonder whether I might venture to ring the bell, and ask the gentle Metcalfe to bring me a drink. All this 'wondering' and this 'whethering' makes me feel not only uncommonly dry, but also more like the hero who never was on sea or land except in the pages of a shilling shocker, or in a melodramatic play, than like an ordinary, everyday young man who fancies that a pipeful of tobacco taken in conjunction with liquid refreshment in the shape of a stiff 'whisky,' would suit his complaint down to the ground. Anyhow, I'll try. Then for the garden, for my dream picture, and possibly for our friend and enemy, the Dumpling!" CHAPTER XVI. THE GHOST IN THE GARDEN.