again in a dream.

The image of her was as vividly impressed on me as the far different
image of the child Mary, when I used to see it in the days of old.
The dream-figure of the woman was robed as I had seen it robed on the
bridge. She wore the same broad-brimmed garden-hat of straw. She looked
at me as she had looked when I approached her in the dim evening light.
After a little her face brightened with a divinely beautiful smile; and
she whispered in my ear, "Friend, do you know me?"

I knew her, most assuredly; and yet it was with an incomprehensible
after-feeling of doubt. Recognizing her in my dream as the stranger
who had so warmly interested me, I was, nevertheless, dissatisfied with
myself, as if it had not been the right recognition. I awoke with this
idea; and I slept no more that night.

In three days' time I was strong enough to go out driving with my
mother, in the comfortable, old-fashioned, open carriage which had once
belonged to Mr. Germaine.

On the fourth day we arranged to make an excursion to a little waterfall
in our neighborhood. My mother had a great admiration of the place, and
had often expressed a wish to possess some memorial of it. I resolved
to take my sketch-book: with me, on the chance that I might be able to
please her by making a drawing of her favorite scene.

Searching for the sketch-book (which I had not used for years), I found
it in an old desk of mine that had remained unopened since my departure
for India. In the course of my investigation, I opened a drawer in the
desk, and discovered a relic of the old times--my poor little Mary's
first work in embroidery, the green flag!

The sight of the forgotten keepsake took my mind back to the bailiff's
cottage, and reminded me of Dame Dermody, and her confident prediction
about Mary and me.

I smiled as I recalled the old woman's assertion that no human power
could "hinder the union of the kindred spirits of the children in the
time to come." What had become of the prophesied dreams in which we were
to communicate with each other through the term of our separation? Years
had passed; and, sleeping or waking, I had seen nothing of Mary. Years
had passed; and the first vision of a woman that had come to me had
been my dream a few nights since of the stranger whom I had saved from
drowning. I thought of these chances and changes in my life, but not
contemptuously or bitterly. The new love that was now stealing its way
into my heart