"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
that. Tell me."
Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
couple of centuries."
"_What_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
says--? What was that? A couple of _centuries_!"
"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
They said nothing.
"You--did you say--?"
"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the
red beard.
There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
heard was indeed true.
"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances--trances
don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me!
Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
Cornwall--?"
His voice failed him.
The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history,
sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
Cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There
is a house there still. I have been there."
"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster.
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