When he woke the room was quite dark; the clouds had hung their dusters over the moon's face by mistake perhaps, or else she had got tired of shining and had turned in for a nap, thought Gratian sleepily. He shut his eyes again, and curled himself round the other way, and would have been asleep again in half a minute, but for a sound which suddenly reached his ears. Some one was talking near him! Gratian opened his eyes again, forgetting that that could not help him to hear, and listened. Yes, it was a voice--two voices; he heard one stop and the other reply, and now and then they seemed to be talking together, and gradually as he listened he discovered that they came from the direction of the fireplace. Could it be the voices of his father and mother coming up from below, through the chimney, somehow? No, their voices were not so strangely soft and sadly sweet; besides their room was not under his, nor did they ever talk in the middle of the night. "They are too sleepy for that," thought Gratian with a little smile. For the farmer and his wife were very hard-working, and even on Sunday they were tired. It was a long walk to church, and unless the weather were very bad they always went twice. Gratian listened again, more intently than ever. The voices went on; he could distinguish the different tones--more than two he began to fancy. But how provoking it was; he _could_ not catch the words. And from the strain of listening he almost began to fall asleep again, when at last--yes, there was no doubt of it now--he caught the sound of his own name. "Gratian, Gra--tian," in a very soft inquiring tone; "ye--es, he is a good boy on the whole, but he is foolish too. He is wasting his time." "Sadly so--sad--ly so--o," hummed back the second voice. "He only dreams--dreams are very well in their way, they are a beginning sometimes, so--me--ti--imes. But he will never do anything even with his dreams unless he works too--wo--orks too." "Ah no--no--o. All must work save the will-o'-the-wisps, and what good are they? What good are the--ey?" Then the two, or the three, maybe even the four, Gratian could not be sure but that there were perhaps four, voices seemed all to hum together, "What good are the--ey?" Till with a sudden rushing call one broke in with a new cry. "Sisters," it said, "we must be off. Our work awai--aits us, awai--aits us." And softly they all faded away, or was it perhaps that Gratian fell asleep? He woke the next morning with a confused remembrance of what he had heard, and for some little time he could not distinguish how much he had dreamt from what had reached his ears before he fell asleep. For all through the night a vague feeling had haunted him of the soft, humming murmur, and two or three times when he half woke and turned on his side, he seemed to hear again the last echoes of the voices in the chimney.