Half an hour later, he was asleep in the adjoining room, dreaming a lightsome dream of ladies and _mousselines de laine_, when suddenly the dream turned to a nightmare.

It seemed to him that there descended upon him a heavy rolling weight, as of a bale of woollens.

He awoke and found that it was Rickman.
The poet lay face downwards across the body of his friend, and was crooning into his ear the great chorus from the third act of Helen in Leuce.

He said that nobody but Spinky understood it.

And Spinky couldn't understand it if he wasn't drunk.
Whereupon Spinks was most curiously uplifted and consoled..