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the crime.
     
    Yes, Taverner was quite prepared to go surety for the boy, and the magistrate, evidently relieved at the turn affairs had taken, forthwith bound the prisoner over to come up for judgement if called upon, and within ten minutes of Taverner's entry upon the scene we were standing on the steps of the court, where the Florentine madonna joined us.
     
    "I don't know who you are, sir," the boy was saying, "nor why you should help me, but I am very grateful to you. May I introduce my fiancee, Miss Fenner? She would like to thank you, too."
     
    Taverner shook hands with the girl.
     
    "I don't suppose you two have eaten much breakfast with this affair hanging over your heads," he said. They admitted that they had not.
     
    "Then," said he, "you must be my guests for an early lunch."
     
    We all packed into a taxi, and drove to the restaurant where the metaphysical head waiter held sway. Here Peter Robson immediately tackled Taverner.
     
    "Look here, sir," he said, "I am exceedingly grateful to you for what you have done for me, but I should very much like to know why you did it."
     
    `Do you ever weave daydreams?" inquired Taverner irrelevantly. Robson stared at him in perplexity, but the girl at his side suddenly exclaimed: "I know what you mean. Do you remember, Peter, the stories we used to make up when we were children? How we belonged to a secret society that had it headquarters in the woodshed, and had only to make a certain sign and people would know we were members and be afraid of us? I remember once, when we had been locked in the scullery because we were naughty, you said that if you made this sign, the policeman would come in and tell your father he had got to let us out, because we belonged to a powerful Brotherhood that did not allow its members to be locked in sculleries. That is exactly what has happened; it is your daydream come true. But what is the meaning of it all?"
     
    "Ah, what, indeed?" said Taverner. Then turning to the boy: `Do you dream much?" he asked.
     
    "Not as a rule," he replied, "but I had a most curious dream the night before last, which I can only regard as prophetic in light of subsequent events. I dreamt that someone was accusing me of a crime, and I woke up in a dreadful way about it."
     
    `Dreams are curious things," said Taverner, "both day dreams and night dreams. I don't know which are the stranger. Do you believe in the immortality of the soul, Mr. Robson?'
     
    "Of course I do."
     
    "Then has it ever struck you the eternal life must stretch both ways?"
     
    "You mean," said Robson under his breath, "that it wasn't all imagination. It might be--memory?"
     
    "Other people have had the same dream," said Taverner, "myself among them." Then he leant across the narrow table and stared into the lad's eyes.
     
    "Supposing I told you that just such an organization as you imagined exists; that if, as a boy even, you had gone out into the main street and made that Sign, someone would have been almost certain to answer it?
     
    "Supposing I told you that the impulse which made you break that window was not a blind instinct, but an attempt to carry out an order from your Fraternity, would you believe me?"
     
    "I think I should," said the lad opposite him. "At any rate, if it isn't true, I wish it were, for it appeals to me more than anything I have ever heard."
     
    "If you care to go deeper into the matter," said Taverner, "will you come this evening to my place in Harley Street, and then we can talk the matter over?"
     
    Robson accepted with eagerness. What man would refuse to follow his daydreams when they began to materialize?
     
    After we had parted from our new acquaintance, we took a taxi to St. John's Wood and stopped at a house whose front ground floor window was in process of being reglazed. Taverner sent in his card, and we were ushered into a room decorated with large bronze Buddhas, statuettes from Egyptian tombs, and pictures by Watts. In a few minutes Mr.