Most of the story's action takes place in the mind of Randolph Carter, an experienced dream wanderer who has gloried in the beauties of the imagination. But at age thirty he becomes infected with the cynicism of modern life and loses his ability to travel in the dream world. Nothing in the physical world can compare with the ability of Carter's dreams to inspire wonder and awe. The physical settings for the story's action are primarily Boston and Kingsport, Carter's ancestral village in New England. There are references to Carter's participation in World War I as a member of the French Foreign Legion and to his being wounded in France, as well as to his occult studies in the American South which end abruptly in a graveyard. But the story's emphasis is on the contrast between Boston, his home as an adult, and the now uninhabited old Carter...