ret, Tabby?" inquired her mother.

"Because I had a dream last night as foretold it! I dreamed as I was a
walking in the haunted wing, in the wery room where Rosa Blondelle was
murdered, and suddenly the sun shone full into the room, lighting it up
like noon-day."

"And to dream of the sun shining into a room, is a sure sign of the
revelation of secrets and the discovery of hidden things," said Miss
Libby, mysteriously.

"Stuff and nonsense about dreams and visions!" sharply exclaimed Mrs.
Winterose; "but whatever has caused you to change your mind about Mrs.
Berners' reskee, I shall be very glad to hear the particulars, Tabby; so
go on."

"Well, goodness knows there an't much after all, as I _have_ to tell,
but you shall hear it! Well, soon after you left, mother, the prison
doctor _he_ got up to go home; and he asked Mr. Berners, who had been
waiting out in the lobby to hear from his wife, if _he_ would go along
with him to bring back some medicine; and Mr. Berners and him they both
went out in the storm, and oh, how it was a storming to be sure!"

"Yes, that it was!" assented Mrs. Winterose. "I thought as I should
never a got through it myself!"

"Well, I sat there hour after hour, holding the new-born baby in my lap,
watching the unconscious mother and waiting for Mr. Berners to come back
with the medicine. Well, I might a waited!"

"Yes, for there was no getting back that night!" put in the old lady.

"No, for the storm got worse and worse! The rain poured, the wind
howled, the waters rose! Oh, what a horrible night! It was as if the end
of all things was come, and the world was about to be destroyed by
water, instead of by fire!"

"I know what sort of a night it was, Tabby. I can never forget it! Tell
me how Sybil Berners was reskeed?" said Mrs. Winterose, impatiently.

"I am a telling of you as fast as ever I can; which she never would a
been reskeed neither, if it hadn't a been for that there blessed flood,
which you don't even want me to tell about," complained Miss Tabby.

"Tell me about the reskee!" commanded Mrs. Winterose, peremptorily.

"Well, then, just as I had discovered as the waters had ris' almost up
to the level of the windows, and was even oozing through the walls like
dew, and rising higher every minute, and I was in deadly fear of our
lives, and screeching as loud as I could screech, for some one to come
and let us out, which nobody could hear us because of the hollering, and
bawlin