William Brenton pondered long on the situation.

He would have known better how to act if he could have been perfectly certain that he was not still the victim of a dream.

However, of one thing there was no doubt--namely, that it was particularly harrowing to see what he had seen in his own house.

If it were true that he was dead, he said to himself, was not the plan outlined for him by Ferris very much the wiser course to adopt?
He stood now in one of the streets of the city so familiar to him.

People passed and repassed him--men and women whom he had known in life--but nobody appeared to see him.