“He had at this time entirely given up going into society, but his intimacy with me, which had lasted so many years, continued to the end. Shortly before he died, and about three years and a half to four years ago, he told me that he had had a strange dream, which he persisted in regarding as of the supernatural order. This dream came to him on three consecutive nights, and after several conversations with his priest and confessor on the subject, and being encouraged by him in the belief that it was something more than a mere wandering of the disordered fancy, he consulted me about it. It was then that for the first time he told me the story of Margaret Affleck, a girl in a humble position in life who had engaged his affections some fourteen years before, and from whom he had parted after a few months' acquaintance. He assured me that he had all but forgotten this affair; that when parting from her he had given her some money as a compensation for the trouble he had brought on her; while, on her side, she had told him that she would not be disgraced, but that she would marry a young man in her own class, who was willing and anxious to take her. “At all events, during those fourteen years he had never seen nor heard anything of her. Then comes the dream. He dreamt that he was in the church for early matins, and that he heard a voice calling 'Father, father!' to him, and on looking round saw a poor girl in ragged clothes, and with a pale, exceedingly sad face, and that he had no sooner looked on her than he knew that she was his child, and the child of Margaret Affleck. She was crying piteously, and wringing her hands and imploring him to deliver her from her misery; and in his struggling efforts to go to her he woke.