fore, been decided that, in future, everybody should leave their legs outside.
It seemed to me that the management, in making this order, had clearly gone beyond their legal right; and, under ordinary circumstances I should have disputed it. Being present, however, more in the character of a guest than in that of a patron, I hardly liked to make a disturbance; and so I sat down and meekly prepared to comply with the demand.
I had never before known that the human leg did unscrew. I had always thought it was a fixture. But the man showed me how to undo them, and I found that they came off quite easily.
The discovery did not surprise me any more than the original request that I should take them off had done. Nothing does surprise one in a dream.
I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-bye!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished-not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.
They bore the calamity, besides, with an amount of stoicism that would have done credit to a Spartan father. There was no fuss, no scene. On the contrary, an atmosphere of mild cheerfulness prevailed.
Yet they were very kind. Somebody—an uncle, I think—left me a packet of sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, I should feel peckish on the scaffold.
It is "those twin-gaolers of the daring" thought,
