In a back room he had fixed up a lathe, and a small joiner's bench, at which he occasionally amused himself. There were various kinds of useless knick-knacks that he could manufacture with some degree of skill, and the toys of half the children in the neighbourhood were mended at his bench. As soon as he had sent off his letter to Gerald, he shut himself up in his little workshop, and set to work busily to finish a little toy boat, which was half done already. It was a very small affair--a child's boat, in fact, cut out of a block of wood, and not more than a couple of feet in length. He worked at it till late that evening, and by noon next day it was finished to his satisfaction. Then he slept for an hour, and then he sat down to write his letter. This is what he wrote:-- "My Darling Mary, "I had a very strange dream the other night. I dreamt that I had written you a letter, and that when I had sealed it up I put it in a little boat, and let the boat and the letter float down the river with the tide. And in my dream I seemed to watch the boat till it got far out to sea, beyond the sight of any land. Then all at once the clouds gathered, till the black edges of one of them seemed to touch the sea, and then from cloud and sea together there was formed a huge waterspout, that presently drew to itself and sucked up my boat and letter. And when they vanished, the waterspout vanished also, and presently the clouds broke away, and in the heavens one splendid star was shining, which seemed to me as a token that you had received my letter. "My darling, I have translated this dream as a message from you, telling me what I ought to do. Very often of late your face has appeared to me in my dreams; but when I have tried to speak to you, an invisible finger seemed to be laid on my lips, and my heart could only yearn dumbly towards you. But now you have shown me a way by means of which a message may reach you--for from you alone that dream could come. The boat is ready, and the midnight tide will take it down to the sea, and then at dawn of day the waterspout will come and lift my letter up into the clouds; but of what will follow after I know nothing. "My darling, day by day the time of our separation grows shorter; soon shall we see each other again, and all these long years of waiting and trouble will seem but as a dim vision of the night, fading and vanishing utterly in the bright dawn of an everlasting day. The purpose that has held me and chained me to this life for so, long a time is now near its fulfilment, and after that I feel and know that I shall not be long before I join you. Soon the time will be here when I can tell everything to our child--our child, Mary! whom I have never seen since she lay an infant in your arms. Very precious will her love be to me, but not so precious as yours. I shall stay with her a little while, I shall tell her all about the mother whom she cannot remember, and then I shall go to you.