“No one, my dear father. When I heard from Elfie that you had returned, I easily divined it. Where else should you have been living all this while, not to have come home to us? But besides that, dear father, several months ago, nearly a year ago indeed, when my brain and nervous system were in an abnormal and exalted condition from the effects of illness and drugs, I had a dream or vision in which I saw you in prison.” “Dream? vision? My child, you surely do not attach any importance to such very natural phenomena?” “I don’t know, I will tell you all about my strange experience some day—not now. I will only say _this_ now: that my dream left upon my mind so strong an impression of your continued existence in this world, that I was more overjoyed than surprised when Elfie came to announce your return. And now that I see you before me, and hear you admit that you were a captive confined in a Confederate prison, just as I dreamed you were, I cannot help attaching some significance to my dream.” “A mere coincidence, my little daughter. Millions of dreams amount to nothing. But if one in a billion seems prophetic from an accidental coincidence, it is immediately set down among supernatural phenomena. Nonsense, my Minie! The wonder is, not that one dream in a billion happens to coincide with something in real life, but that nearly all of them do not. So you have been a little Sister of Charity in these years, my Minie?” “Yes, my father; but there was really no merit in that. My heart would have broken else. I had to comfort others in order to sustain myself.” “Did you then suffer so much, my Minie?” tenderly inquired her father. “Not more, nor so much as many thousand women have suffered during this war. But I believe that I was weaker than others, and more ready to succumb to sorrow, if I had not kept myself up in the way I did. First there came—But I will not talk to you of these things now. Father, dear father, you know—How much do you know about Justin?” she asked after some embarrassment and hesitation. “I know _all_ about him, my dear child. I parted with him not an hour ago, at his headquarters. I had to go there first, for there was one with me who had important business with him. On reaching the city, I and he who was with me inquired for Colonel Rosenthal’s address, and were told that General Rosenthal was at his headquarters. So we went there and spent two hours with him” “My brother must have been—tremendously astonished and overjoyed.” “He was, my darling. Justin is a stout man, and in the last four years he has grown stouter. But when he saw me he was nearer swooning than I ever saw a man in my life. He first arose to receive me, believing me to be a stranger, but when he recognized me he turned white as death, reeled, caught the edge of his table for support, and fell back into his seat. It was a full minute before he could recover himself and welcome me. You sustained the shock with more firmness, my Minie.”