Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, where Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er With characters forevermore unread, Only the wind’s soft hands went up and down Scattering the obliterative sands. I, led in trance by shapes invisible, Approached a temple’s splendid architrave Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases, And there by sudden divination read The deep-cut legend of that awful gate: APPEASE WITH SACRIFICE THE UNKNOWN POWERS. The next vision is of the city in its present state, “builded on like dust,” but teeming with activity and material purpose, through which a glimmering ideal begins to dawn: They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods, Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust, As if there were no morrow watching them; Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream Than ever in all achievéd yesterdays. Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the high commission intrusted to him: And as I looked, I saw a man who long In upward meditation on his roof Sat all alone, communing with his soul, And he arose, and presently went down, Down in the long black streets among his kind, And there with patience taught them steadfastly; But, for the restless souls he made in them, They turned and slew him and went on their ways, And a great fog crept up and covered all. Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, that “for the restless souls he made in them” they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to their source in this line, which holds also the suggestive truth as to the final acceptance of that for which the prophet dies. Once having planted the seed whose stirring makes the “restless soul,” its growth is committed to the Law, and can no more be prevented than the shining of the sun or the flowing of the tides. Abgar was granted a third vision, of the city in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and achievement were given definite shape before him, and the recital ends with the triumphal note: Fear not for me: I go unto the city!