“Oh, what a fool I am to take things so hard!” she panted. “Now everybody’ll know I’m afraid to pray in public. There won’t be one person that goes to the Methodist church that won’t know it. Oh, you silly idiot! Oh, how I hate you!” In a culminating burst of rage, she turned over and set her teeth violently into her thin arm. The hours writhed away at last, and just before dawn she fell asleep, but, even then she was not delivered. In her dreams she herself became horribly confused with the little chimney-swallow, and Mrs. Anderson, in the shape of Blackie the cat, pounced upon her. There was another cat also--this one with two heads; one head had the snapping eyes of Mrs. Wicket, and the other the broad and stupid face of Miss Mary Humphries. They gazed on her, and she heard them making a dreadful play on words. “She can’t pray,” said the Miss Mary Humphries’ head. “If she can’t pray, she’s my prey,” said the Mrs. Anderson cat, and opened her mouth. Julie saw the jaws, she saw the teeth, she saw the red tongue curled back. In a moment everything else disappeared. In all the world there was nothing but herself that was a little naked bird, and that gaping mouth descending upon her. Closer and closer it came, the tongue curled back, the white teeth in rows. It closed upon her, and she shrieked, only she did not shriek in her own woman’s voice but rather in that last agony that the fledgling emitted when Blackie pounced. With a violent start, she awoke. It was early daylight and she was in her own bed; but the dream was still upon her, and for a moment she could not shake it off. It seemed as though somewhere in her sleep she had doffed her humanity and for a moment had entered into and known the agony of the captured bird, as though that agony were a real thing, detached and tangible, left alive to blow about through the world and fasten darkly upon any wayfarers of sleep. On the edge of waking, Julie found the tears in her eyes. “Poor little bird! Poor little thing!” she cried pitifully. Then she came to herself. The mystery of sleep withdrew, she slipped back into her own personality, and knew that it was time for her to get ready for her day in Red River. IV When Julie reached the station to take her train for Red River, she found herself the only passenger from Hart’s Run. A couple of traveling men, strangers to her, were walking up and down the platform in the fresh morning air, pulling at their cigars, evidently content and well-breakfasted by the hospitality of the Monroe House in the village. The station master was also there. He was Edward Black, the same bully who had torn Julie’s doll to pieces so long ago. He had grown into a stout and flabby man, with small eyes set in so large an expanse of face that one inevitably thought of his cheeks as jowls. He greeted her with “Mornin’, Julie, goin’ away on Number Twelve?” “Just to Red River for the day,” she answered. “I hope Twelve’s on time.”