as you think, friend, perhaps. As to being ill, you will find
many young people in worse case than I am. More's the pity that it
should be so--not that I should be strong and hearty for my years, I
mean, but that they should be weak and tender. I ask your pardon
though,' said the old man, 'if I spoke rather rough at first. My eyes
are not good at night--that's neither age nor illness; they never
were--and I didn't see you were a stranger.'

'I am sorry to call you from your bed,' said Kit, 'but those gentlemen
you may see by the churchyard gate, are strangers too, who have just
arrived from a long journey, and seek the parsonage-house. You can
direct us?'

'I should be able to,' answered the old man, in a trembling voice,
'for, come next summer, I have been sexton here, good fifty years. The
right hand path, friend, is the road.--There is no ill news for our
good gentleman, I hope?'

Kit thanked him, and made him a hasty answer in the negative; he was
turning back, when his attention was caught by the voice of a child.
Looking up, he saw a very little creature at a neighbouring window.

'What is that?' cried the child, earnestly. 'Has my dream come true?
Pray speak to me, whoever that is, awake and up.'

'Poor boy!' said the sexton, before Kit could answer, 'how goes it,
darling?' 'Has my dream come true?' exclaimed the child again, in a
voice so fervent that it might have thrilled to the heart of any
listener. 'But no, that can never be! How could it be--Oh! how could
it!'

'I guess his meaning,' said the sexton. 'To bed again, poor boy!'

'Ay!' cried the child, in a burst of despair. 'I knew it could never
be, I felt too sure of that, before I asked! But, all to-night, and
last night too, it was the same. I never fall asleep, but that cruel
dream comes back.'

'Try to sleep again,' said the old man, soothingly. 'It will go in
time.'

'No no, I would rather that it staid--cruel as it is, I would rather
that it staid,' rejoined the child. 'I am not afraid to have it in my
sleep, but I am so sad--so very, very sad.'

The old man blessed him, the child in tears replied Good night, and Kit
was again alone.

He hurried back, moved by what he had heard, though more by the child's
manner than by anything he had said, as his meaning was hidden from
him. They took the path indicated by the sexton, and soon arrived
before the parsonage wall. Turning round to look about them when they
had got thus