It was a cozy group on the old sofa before the open wood fire, Zac, Cyrus and Dr. Alton, and they stayed an hour or more. Dr. Alton began to realize that this faculty was not only mind reading but something far beyond. That thoughts of others should come to this boy with no effort of his own was almost incredible. Even more amazing was the transmission through space not only of spoken words but of the unuttered wishes of far away friends. Was his son the master of a vital secret, a mysterious power now unknown to science but, in future years perhaps, to be common knowledge? Was it within the realms of material science? Or was it an individual form of spiritual sympathy, some ethereal harmony attuned by superhuman guidance to a chosen few? When Cyrus had gone upstairs to bed Dr. Alton sat long before the open fine, remembering. And there was much to remember. At last he stepped out into the night air and stood upon the doorstep. Before him, in the moon-light, were snow-covered fields, tall skeletons of elms and maples, their leafless branches like barren memories against the sky. But this New England landscape was not what he saw. He saw, through his closed eyelids, the blue waters of the Adriatic. Close beside him a pair of loving eyes, dark, tragic--but smiling now--were looking deep into his own and the woman's lips were asking if it were possible for the unborn child to inherit its mother's power of divining another's thoughts. And he--the wise young doctor!--shook his head and smiled at the foolish question. And, lo! not only had the power descended to the boy but with it had come an added faculty even more mysterious and unbelievable! [Illustration] IX DREAMS? It was the very next morning that Ruth's father, the Rev. George Bentley Heywood, received an urgent appeal from China to fill a vacancy in the missionary field. Ten days after receiving the message he, his wife and tearful daughter, were on a train for San Francisco. The days that followed were solemn days for Cyrus. And it so happened that the next ten years were solemn years for Longfields. A new railroad carried through a neighboring town left the village stranded. The young men began to leave. When a house burned there was no rebuilding. The tottering sheds behind the weed-grown cellar of the Baptist Church were typical of the town's decay. It was significant that when Philetus Bisbee died--house and carriage painter--his business had so shrunk that no one took his place. The burning of the inn meant that Longfields as a resting place for travelers was to be forgotten. People died in Longfields, but few were born. Pupils at the little red school house dwindled to about a dozen. The teacher's pay was so small that to accept the position became an act of charity to the village. When Judge David Lincoln moved away he expressed sincere regret: "I am sorry to go, but lawyers cannot thrive on memories alone."