closed the door behind him, when the whole gorgeous company of his wedding morning were before him, and so real did they seem to him that John entirely forgot his intention of grasping the “Great Mogul” by the arm, to convince himself of the reality of that personage. The company overflowed with congratulations, rather florid to my friend’s occidentally trained taste, but doubtless poetical in the extreme from an oriental point of view. Vantine was afterward amused and a little surprised to remember how much as a matter of course he took the adulation offered him, and the ease with which he played the rôle of “Great Master.”

But suddenly he became so thoroughly amazed that all power of speech or motion[152] seemed to forsake him. In the arms of the “Great Mogul” he perceived his baby boy, or an image that seemed to be the child, and to the babe the brilliant company were kneeling and swearing fealty. The whole ceremony occupied about half an hour, at the end of which time Vantine found himself once more alone, and upon going downstairs he met his wife and the nurse with the baby returning from their drive.

[152]

“He’s slept like a dormouse,” Mrs. Vantine said, in answer to her husband’s inquiry. “I tried to rouse him once, but he wouldn’t wake. I was half frightened, but he seems all right now.”

As they entered the parlor the maid came to inquire if Mr. Vantine had brought company to luncheon, as she had heard voices in the library,—a circumstance which proved that the sound of the voices of his ghostly visitors was audible to other ears than his own.

John vainly wished that the baby, healthy, awake and cooing now, could tell whether dreams or strange experiences had troubled its sleep while its father had seen its image; but that is a point upon which he has never received enlightenment.

It was one winter night when the baby was six months old that the “Great Mogul”[153] presented himself again. My friend had been taking a bath, and was dressing for bed when the figure of his visions appeared, and with every mark of terror and consternation prostrated itself at his feet.

[153]

“Great Master,” it gasped in the usual formula, “pardon your slave’s intrusion. The enemy are upon us. They—”

With this sentence still unfinished, the vision faded away in an instant, as if some unforeseen catastrophe in whatever region it came from had 

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