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Having thus, one might say, laid the foundation of the American spirit in Canalejos, Strawbridge yawned frankly and said:

"If you'll be good enough to show me my bunk, I believe I'll hit the hay."

Coronel Saturnino pressed a button on his desk and a moment later a little palace guard in uniform entered the library, carrying a rifle. The colonel gave a brief order, then walked to the door with his guest and bowed him out of the study.

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Next morning the cathedral bells roused Strawbridge with dreams of fire-alarms. He thought he was in a burning house and he struggled terrifically to move a leg, to twitch an inert arm. Somewhere in the sleeping bulk of the drummer a strange, insubstantial entity sent out desperate alarms. At last a finger flexed, an eyelid trembled, then suddenly something in the sleeper's brain expanded, flowed out through and identified itself with the whole body. It was reinstated as a traveling salesman with trade ambitions who pursued devious ends through ways and means imposed on him by custom and training. The drummer opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face and damned the bells for waking him. The fact that by some strange means he had been cut off a moment or two from his body, that he had engaged in a terrific struggle to regain its control, did not suggest a mystery or provoke a question in his mind. He had had a nightmare. That explained everything. He often had nightmares. To Thomas Strawbridge's type of mind anything that happens often cannot possibly contain a mystery.