‘What way?’ I cried, feverish and eager; for though I despised him, yet it made me wonder to think that he should speak riddles which I could not understand. He answered very faintly, ‘I do not know.’ The fool! then it was only folly, as from the first I knew it was. I felt then that I could treat him roughly, after the fashion of the place--which he said had got into me. ‘Poor wretch!’ I said, ‘you have hopes, have you? Where have you come from? You might have learned better before now.’ ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘from where we met before. I have come by the valley of gold. I have worked in the mines. I have served in the troops of those who are masters there. I have lived in this town of tyrants, and lain in this lazar-house before. Everything has happened to me, more and worse than you dream of.’ ‘And still you go on? I would dash my head against the wall and die.’ ‘When will you learn,’ he said, with a strange tone in his voice, which, though no one had been listening to us, made a sudden silence for a moment--it was so strange: it moved me like that glimmer of the blue sky in my dream, and roused all the sufferers round with an expectation--though I know not what. The cries stopped, the hands beat no longer. I think all the miserable crowd were still, and turned to where he lay. ‘When will you learn--that you have died, and can die no more?’ There was a shout of fury all round me. ‘Is that all you have to say?’ the crowd burst forth: and I think they rushed upon him and killed him: for I heard no more: until the hubbub began again more wild than ever, with furious hands beating, beating, against the locked door.