to his faculties, left them suddenly. His
brain grew confused—his heart bent wildly
—his ears opened for the first time since
the appearance of the woman, to a sense
of the woful, ceaseless moaning of the wind
among the trees. With the dreadful
conviction of the reality of what he had seen,
still strong within him, he leapt out of bed,
and screaming—" Murder!—Wake up, there,
wake up! "—dashed headlong through the
darkness to the door.

It was fast locked, exactly as he had left it
on going to bed.

His cries on starting up, had alarmed
the house. He heard the terrified,
confused, exclamations of women; he saw the
master of the house approaching along the
passage, with his burning rush-candle in one
hand and his gun in the other.

"What is it?" asked the landlord, breathlessly.

Isaac could only answer in a whisper:
"A woman, with a knife in her
hand," he gasped out. " In my room a fair,
yellow-haired woman; she jabbed at me
with the knife, twice over."

The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. He
looked at Isaac eagerly by the flickering
light of his candle; and his face began to get
red again—his voice altered, too, as well as
his complexion.

"She seems to have missed you twice," he
said.

"I dodged the knife as it came down,"
Isaac went on, in the same scared whisper.
"It struck the bed each time."

The landlord took his candle into the bed-
room immediately. In less than a minute he
came out again into the passage in a violent
passion.

"The devil fly away with you and your
woman with the knife! What do you mean
by coming into a man's place and frightening
his family out of their wits about a dream?"

"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly.
"Better out on the road, in rain and dark, on
my way home, than back again in that room
after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light
to get on my clothes by, and tell me what I'm
to pay."

"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the
way with his light sulkily into the bedroom.
"You'll find your score on the slate when you
go down stairs. I wouldn't have taken you
in for all the money you've got about you, if
I'd known your dreaming, screeching ways
beforehand. Look at the bed. Where's the
cut of a knife in it? Look at the window—
is the lock bursted? Look at the door
(which I heard you fasten myself)—is it
broke in? A murdering woman with a
knife in my house! You ought to be
ashamed of yourself!"

Isaac answered not a word. He huddled
on his clothes; and then they went down
stairs together.

"Nigh on twenty minutes past two! " said
the landlord, as they passed the clock. " A
nice time in the morning to frighten honest
people out of their wits!"

Isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let
him out at the front door, asking, with a grin
of contempt, as he undid the strong fasten-
ings, whether " the murdering woman got in
that way? " They parted without a word
on either side. The rain had ceased; but
the night was dark, and the wind bleaker
than ever. Little did the darkness, or the
cold, or the uncertainty about his way home,
matter to Isaac. If he had been turned out
into a wilderness in a thunder-storm, it would
have been a relief, after what he had suffered
in the bedroom of the inn.

What was the fair woman with the knife?
The creature of a dream, or that other
creature from the unknown world called
among men by the name of ghost? He could
make nothing of the mystery—had made
nothing of it, even when it was mid-day on
Wednesday, and when he stood, at last, after
many times missing his road, once more on
the doorstep of home.

His mother came out eagerly to receive
him. His face told her in a moment that
something was wrong.

"I've lost the place; but that's my luck.
I dreamed an ill dream last night, mother
—or, may be, I saw a ghost. Take it either
way, it scared me out of my senses, and I'm
not my own man again yet."

"Isaac! your face frightens me. Come in
to the fire. Come in, and tell mother all
about it."

He was as anxious to tell as she was to
hear; for it had been his hope, all the way
home, that his mother, with her quicker
capacity and superior knowledge, might be
able to throw some light on the mystery
which he could not clear up for himself.
His memory of the dream was still
mechanically vivid, though his thoughts were
entirely confused by it.

His mother's face grew paler and paler as
he went on. She never interrupted him by
so much as a single word; but when he had
done, she moved her chair close to his, put
her arm round his neck, and said to him:

"Isaac, you dreamed your ill dream on this
Wednesda'y morning. What time was it
when you saw the fair woman with the knife
in her hand?"

Isaac reflected on what the landlord had
said when they passed by the clock on his
leaving the inn—allowed as nearly as he
could for the time that must have elapsed
between the unlocking of his bedroom door
and the paying of his bill just before going
away, and answered:

"Somewhere about two o'clock in the
morning."

His mother suddenly quitted her hold of
his neck, and struck her hands together with
a gesture of despair.

"This Wednesday is your birthday Isaac;