Mr Segundus found that Mr Honeyfoot had grasped his shoulder and was gently shaking him.

“I beg your pardon!” said Mr Honeyfoot. “But you cried out in your sleep and I thought perhaps you would wish to be woken.”

Mr Segundus looked at him in some perplexity. “I had a dream,” he said. “A most curious dream!”

Mr Segundus told his dream to Mr Honeyfoot.

“What a remarkably magical spot!” said Mr Honeyfoot, approvingly. “Your dream – so full of odd symbols and portents – is yet another proof of it!”

“But what does it mean?” asked Mr Segundus.

“Oh!” said Mr Honeyfoot, and stopt to think a while. “Well, the lady wore blue, you say? Blue signifies – let me see – immortality, chastity and fidelity; it stands for Jupiter and can be represented by tin. Hmmph! Now where does that get us?”

“Nowhere, I think,” sighed Mr Segundus. “Let us walk on.”

Mr Honeyfoot, who was anxious to see more, quickly agreed to this proposal and suggested that they explore the interior of the Shadow House.

In the fierce sunlight the house was no more than a towering, green-blue haze against the sky. As they passed through the doorway to the Great Hall, “Oh!” cried Mr Segundus.

“Why! What is it now?” asked Mr Honeyfoot, startled.

Upon either side of the doorway stood a stone image of the Raven King. “I saw these in my dream,” said Mr Segundus.

In the Great Hall Mr Segundus looked about him. The mirrors and the paintings that he had seen in his dream were long since gone. Lilac and elder trees filled up the broken walls. Horse-chestnuts and ash made a roof of green and silver that flowed and dappled against the blue sky. Fine gold grasses and ragged robin made a latticework for the empty stone windows.

At one end of the room there were two indistinct figures in a blaze of sunlight. A few odd items were scattered about the floor, a kind of magical debris: some pieces of paper with scraps of spells scribbled upon them, a silver basin full of water and a half-burnt candle in an ancient brass candlestick.

Mr Honeyfoot wished these two shadowy figures a good morning and one replied to him in grave and civil tones, but the other cried out upon the instant, “Henry, it is he! That is the fellow! That is the very man I described! Do you not see? A small man with hair and eyes so dark as to be almost Italian – though the hair has grey in it. But the expression so quiet and timid as to be English without a doubt! A shabby coat all dusty and patched, with frayed cuffs that he has tried to hide by snipping them close. Oh! Henry, this is certainly the man! You sir!” he cried, suddenly addressing Mr Segundus. “Explain yourself!”

Poor Mr Segundus was very much astonished to hear himself and his coat so minutely described by a complete stranger – and the description itself of such a peculiarly distressing sort! Not at all polite. As he stood, trying to collect his thoughts, his interlocutor moved into the shade of an ash-tree that formed part of the north wall of the hall and for the first time in the waking world Mr Segundus beheld Jonathan Strange.