woman with a knife in my house! You ought to be ashamed of
yourself!"

My eyes followed his hand as it pointed first to the bed--then to the
window--then to the door. There was no gainsaying it. The bed sheet was as
sound as on the day it was made. The window was fast. The door hung on its
hinges as steady as ever. I huddled my clothes on without speaking. We
went downstairs together. I looked at the clock in the bar-room. The time
was twenty minutes past two in the morning. I paid my bill, and the
landlord let me out. The rain had ceased; but the night was dark, and the
wind was bleaker than ever. Little did the darkness, or the cold, or the
doubt about the way home matter to _me_. My mind was away from all these
things. My mind was fixed on the vision in the bedroom. What had I seen
trying to murder me? The creature of a dream? Or that other creature from
the world beyond the grave, whom men call ghost? I could make nothing of
it as I walked along in the night; I had made nothing by it by
midday--when I stood at last, after many times missing my road, on the
doorstep of home.

VI

My mother came out alone to welcome me back. There were no secrets between
us two. I told her all that had happened, just as I have told it to you.
She kept silence till I had done. And then she put a question to me.

"What time was it, Francis, when you saw the Woman in your Dream?"

I had looked at the clock when I left the inn, and I had noticed that the
hands pointed to twenty minutes past two. Allowing for the time consumed
in speaking to the landlord, and in getting on my clothes, I answered that
I must have first seen the Woman at two o'clock in the morning. In other
words, I had not only seen her on my birthday, but at the hour of my
birth.

My mother still kept silence. Lost in her own thoughts, she took me by the
hand, and led me into the parlor. Her writing-desk was on the table by
the fireplace. She opened it, and signed to me to take a chair by her
side.

"My son! your memory is a bad one, and mine is fast failing me. Tell me
again what the Woman looked like. I want her to be as well known to both
of us, years hence, as she is now."

I obeyed; wondering what strange fancy might be working in her mind. I
spoke; and she wrote the words as they fell from my lips:

"Light gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid. Flaxen hair, with a
golden-yellow streak in it. White arms, with a down upon them. Little,
lady's hands,