'Then,' he resumed at length, 'when we reached this place and found there _had_ been a previous explorer, and a European at that, I felt I was near the end of my quest. I see now quite clearly that Kalliboas recognised me almost at once from my likeness to my father. It was no more than a vague suspicion at first, of course, but once I realised that he was deliberately putting obstacles in the way of our visiting the stranger's tomb, my suspicions began to take shape. Since then I have worked with one end: to unravel that secret. My first attempt was a failure, as I told you to-night. No doubt Kalliboas was aware of it, and no doubt the cold-blooded old fiend laughed to himself to think the locked door and the plaster casing would always prevent me from learning the truth. But he had reckoned without my ally.' 'You mean--' 'The Princess Helene. God knows what I've done to earn it, Mirlees, but Helene loves me a good deal more than she respects Kalliboas.' 'But how did you come to see her? I take it that is where you've been prowling these nights?' Poyning looked uncomfortable. 'It's a queer thing for any sane man to tell,' he said, 'a very queer thing, but this is my version of it. On the second night after my accident, Helene came to me in a dream so vivid--well, it seemed too vivid to be merely that. She stood beside my bed and spoke to me, telling me again very positively that in another day I should walk. When she went away, I seemed to follow her, and hear her speak of herself as the Princess Helene. Then the vision, or whatever it was, faded away, and when I woke in the morning, I was well enough convinced it was no more than a common dream. But then, by the accident of talking to you, I discovered I knew her name and you did not. That set me thinking. Could there be, I wondered, more in it than I had supposed? I determined to put it to the test. The road I went with her in the dream had remained quite clear in my mind, and I followed it to the point where the vision faded. I was amazed to find everything fit in exactly, even down to the wall we had stood under together. I climbed that wall, Mirlees, and I found Helene--certainly real this time--waiting for me on the other side. It was then that I learned her name was indeed Helene, and that she was twin sister of the Princess Euphrosune. We met at the same place on the following night, and every night since, and she has told me many things known to hardly a soul in this valley but the Nine Shadows. My inquiries naturally enough were mainly for the stranger who had come here before. Helene had seen him, and remembered him. He was a man, she said, very like me in face, though much older. He came into the valley alone, nearly dead with exhaustion, and was tended and hospitably entertained; none of the secrets of the valley, however, were explained to him. He knew nothing of the Hall of Wandering Souls, or that languages of the outer