I have followed the coast, day after day-from New Quay. “Exercise?” suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his interlocutor’s face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men were silent. “I’ve never suffered from sleeplessness myself,” he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, “but in those cases I have known, people have usually found something-” An idea natural enough under the circumstances, prompted him to keep the conversation going. He stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. “That makes it difficult,” said Isbister.

I dare not take … sufficiently powerful drugs.” They are all very well for the run of people.

“It may sound incredible,” said the stranger, turning weary eyes to Isbister’s face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, “but I have had no sleep-no sleep at all for six nights.” “No?” was all he said, but his bearing conveyed his helpful impulse. “Very,” answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a colourless tone, “I can’t sleep.” Both men were disconcerted, Isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that the weather was hot for the time of year. The hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and staring before him, and his face was wet with tears. Halfway down the precipitous path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there.

The Sleeper Awakes THE SLEEPER AWAKES CHAPTER I.

Stir of echoes sleep