The second day passed in the same way, without event or visitors, but during the second night a rather unusual thing happened. I heard Poyning talking in his sleep. Our bedchambers lay cheek to cheek, and we always slept with merely a hanging curtain over the doorways--there were, indeed, no internal doors in the building; and as I lay awake somewhere after midnight I caught a distinct whisper of talk from Poyning's room. I had slept by his side for many weeks during our journey across the mountains, and had often listened to his small lady-like snores; but never in all my experience of him had I heard Poyning utter one word of dream-talk. What struck me as additionally strange about the affair of this night was the way the sound came to me. Generally, I have found that when a man talks in his sleep the talk is continuous. Poyning's was disjointed, for all the world like a dialogue of which the one half has been blotted out. On the morrow I watched him closely, for I was greatly curious to see whether that post-hypnotic suggestion the physician had left imprinted on his mind was going to work. Normally, of course, I should have had no doubt of it, for I know something of the queer phenomena of hypnotism; but it is one thing to be enjoined to wind up the clock or post letters, and quite another to be told that in three days you will recover from a broken ankle. Very soon I saw something was stirring in Stephen Poyning. His manner became more and more excited, and at last, about eleven o'clock, he threw the sheet off his injured foot and felt it tentatively. 'It's sheer black magic and devilry, of course,' he muttered, 'but--' He was tugging at the fastenings of the splint. I next heard that ingenious contrivance clatter on the marble as he tossed it out of bed. 'I shan't want _that_ any more, I can feel. Now let's see--' He had set his foot to the floor and was very gingerly trying his weight upon it. The next moment he was standing. I hurried to him and gave him my arm. 'For God's sake be easy on it!' I cried. 'If you break the bone again it'll take months to mend.' He threw off my arm impatiently. 'Many thanks, Mirlees,' he said, 'but I don't think I require any. Isn't it amazing? The Princess Helene said I would walk again in three days, and--' 'How do you know her name is Helene?' I demanded. Poyning gave me a queer look. 'Eh? That is her name, anyhow,' he said. 'Didn't you know?' 'I didn't. And I'm hanged if I can fathom how you did. I've never heard her name mentioned.' He ran his fingers through his hair in a curiously abstracted manner. 'That's odd,' he muttered. 'You must have forgotten. If Kalliboas hadn't mentioned the name to the pair of us I should hardly know it myself, should I? But I say, look at this, Mirlees!' He was skipping round the floor, pausing now and then on one leg to flex and unflex the ankle which three days ago had been broken.