t his hands,
and uttered a wild scream.

"Why, Mary! what the deuce ails you?"

"What's that upon your hands, Godfrey? What's that upon your hands? It's
blood--blood! Oh, take it away! don't bring to me the price of blood!"

"Nonsense; you are dreaming, girl--gold can gild every stain."

"I have been dreaming," said Mary, rising up in the bed, and putting
back the long hair which had escaped from under her cap, and now fell in
rich neglected masses round her pallid face. "Yes. I have been
dreaming--such an awful dream! I see it before me yet."

"What was it, Mary?" asked her brother, with quivering lips.

"It was a lonesome place," continued the girl, "a dark lonesome place;
but God's moon was shining there, and there was no need of the sun, or
of any other light, for all seemed plain to me as the noon day.

"I saw an old man with grey hairs, and another man old and grey was
beside him. The countenances of both were dark and unlovely. And one old
man was on his knees--but it was not to God he knelt; he had set up an
idol to worship, and that idol was gold; and God, as a punishment, had
turned his heart to stone, so that nothing but the gold could awaken the
least sympathy there. And whilst he knelt to the idol, I heard a cry--a
loud, horrid, despairing cry--and the old man fell to the earth
weltering in his blood; but he had still strength to lock up his idol,
and he held the key as tightly as if it had been the key of heaven. And
I saw two young men enter the house and attack the old man, while his
companion, whom they did not see, stole out of a back door and fled. And
they dashed the wounded old man against the stones, and they marred his
visage with savage blows; and they trod him underfoot, and tore from him
his idol, and fled.

"And I saw another youth with a face full of sorrow, and while he wept
over the dead man, he was surrounded by strange figures, who, regardless
of his grief, forced him from the room. And while I pondered over these
things in my heart, an angel came to my bed-side, and whispered a message
from God in my ears. And I awoke from my sleep; and lo, the old man's
idol was before me, and his blood was upon your hands, Godfrey
Hurdlestone."

"Is this a dream?" cried Godfrey, glancing instinctively at his hands,
on whose white well-formed fingers no trace of the recently enacted
tragedy remained, "did you really witness the scene you have just
described; tell me the truth. Mary, or by ----