I knew--I knew. Why, don't you see," Calliope
cried, "I had to know! That was just the way we'd talked in my
dream--kind of jokin' an' yet meanin' somethin', too--so's you felt all
lifted up an' out o' the ordinary. An' then I knew who he was an' I see
how everything was. Why, the girl that was me an' that was lonesome
there in Friendship _wasn't_ me, very much. Me bein' Calliope Marsh was
the chance part, an' didn't count. But things was rilly the way I'd
dreamed o' their bein.' Somehow, I had another self. An' I had dreamed
o' bein' that self. An' there he stood, on the Friendship depot
platform."

Calliope looked at me wistfully.

"You don't think I sound crazy, do you?" she asked.

And at my answer:--

"Well," she said, brightening, "that was how it was. An' it was like
there hadn't been any first time an' like there wouldn't be any end.
Like they was things bigger than time--an' lots nicer than life. An' I
spoke up like I'd always known him.

"'Why, yes,' I says to him simple, 'you must mean the Depot Woods,' I
said. 'They're always kind o' haunted to me. I guess the little folks
that come in the en-gine smoke live in there,' I told him, smilin'
because I was so glad.

"I remember how su'prised he looked an' how his face lit up, like he was
hearin' English in a heathen land.

"'Upon my word,' he says, still only half believin' in me. 'An' do you
go there often?' he ask' me. 'An' I daresay the little smoke folk talk
to you, now?' he says.

"'I go 'most every day,' I told him, 'but we don't say very much. I
guess they talk an' I listen,' I says.

"An' then the funny part about his askin' Bill for a haunted wood come
over me.

"'_Bill!_' I says. 'Did you actually ask Bill that?'

"Oh, an' how we laughed--how we laughed. Just the way the dream had
been. It seemed--it seemed such a sort o' _special_ comical," Calliope
said, "an' not like a Sodality laugh. 'Seems though I'd always laughed
at one set o' things all my life--my everyday life. An' this was a new
recipe for Laugh, flavoured different, an' baked in a quick oven, an' et
hot.

"Well, we walked down the road together, like it had always been that
way. An' we talked--like you do when you're with them you'd rather be
with than anybody else. An' he ask' me, grave as grave, about the little
smoke folks.

"'Will They be home, do you think?' he says.

"An' I says: 'Oh, yes. I know They will. They're always home.'

"An' we both felt pleased, like w