* * * * * [Illustration: "WAKE UP, WAKE UP!"] "Daubs, Daubs! Wake up, wake up!" John looked up with sleepy eyes. Where the deuce was he? Not in any angelic presence, that was certain. The voice was not pitched in a very heavenly key, and wafted odours of tobacco and beer rather than frankincense and myrrh. John pinched himself to make sure he was awake. This was assuredly no celestial visitor, but Verges--that was his theatrical nickname--the Comedy Theatre watchman. "Is it you, Verges? Will you have the kindness to tell me where I am?" John looked around him in bewilderment. The masks seemed grinning at him in an aggravating way. "Well, you are at present, Mister, in the Comedy Theatre; but you was just now very soundly in the land of Nod, I guess. You'd make a splendid watchman, you would!" Verges' denunciation came with beautiful appropriateness, as he had just come from the public-house opposite, where he had been indulging in sundry libations for this hour past at the expense of some of its customers. "It _is_ a dream, then--not a hideous reality? Thank God, thank God!" "What's a dream?" said Verges, looking with some apprehension at John. When he saw that gentleman begin to caper round the room his fears were not lessened, for he thought that John had taken leave of some of his senses. "Am I awake now, Verges?" "Well, you look like it." "You are certain?" and he put a shilling into Verges' hand. "I never knew you to be more waker. You can keep on being as wide-awake as you please at the same price, Mister!" "Give me my hat and coat, Verges. Thank you," and John passed rapidly out at the door with a hasty "Good night!" Verges looked after him with wide-mouthed astonishment; then he looked at the piece of money in his hand; then he tapped his forehead, and shook his head ominously, muttering, "Daubs is daft--clean daft!" John would not trust his waking senses till he reached the corner of the street at which he had seen so vividly in his dream the incidents just recorded. A solitary policeman was walking up and down, and not so much as a vehicle was to be seen. And then another fear took possession of John. Was his dream a presentiment of danger, and had an accident befallen Willie in some other form? He soon reached his lodgings, hurried up the staircase, and listened fearfully outside the widow's door. Nobody seemed astir, but he could see that a light was burning within. Should he knock? What right had he, a perfect stranger, to intrude at this unreasonable hour? He remembered, too, his bitter thoughts and words about the widow and her children--her "brats!" So he mounted reluctantly to his apartments. How the silence--previously so much desired--oppressed him! He would eagerly have welcomed at that moment a cry, a sob, or any sound of life from the room below. But the sufferer gave no token, and John, in turn, became the sufferer in the worst form of suffering--that of mental anguish.