"Perhaps, child, you are not very well?--been eating green gooseberries, or some such trash. Nothing's more likely to give one bad dreams than unripe fruit." "Why should the dream have left this impression of evil upon me--this weight of fear?" cried Alice, never so much as hearing the pater's irreverent suggestion. "If it meant nothing, if it were not come as a warning, it would pass from my mind as other dreams pass." Not knowing what to say to this, the Squire said nothing. He and Tod both saw how useless it would be; no argument could shake her faith in the dream, and the impression it had left. The Squire, more easily swayed than a child, yet suspecting nothing of the news that was on its way to Timberdale, quitted the Rectory and went home shaking his head. Alice's solemn manner had told upon him. "I can't make much out of the dream, Joe," he remarked, as they walked back through the Ravine; "but I don't say dreams are always to be ridiculed, since we read of dreams sent as warnings in the Bible. Anyhow, I hope Jack will make a good voyage. He has got home safe and sound from other voyages: why should he not from this one?" Before that day was over, they saw Alice again. She walked over to Crabb Cot in the evening with her little girl--a sprightly child with Jack's own honest and kindly eyes. Alice put a sealed paper into the Squire's hand. "I know you will think me silly," she said to him, in a low tone: "perhaps gone a little out of my senses; but, as I told you this morning, nothing has ever impressed me so greatly and so unpleasantly as this dream. I cannot get it out of my mind for a moment; every hour, as it goes by, only serves to render it clearer. I have written it down here, every particular, more minutely than I related it to you this morning, and I have sealed it up, you see; and I am come to ask you to keep it. Should my husband ever be accused, it may serve to----" "Now, child, don't you talk nonsense," interrupted the pater. "Accused of what?" "I don't know. I wish I did. I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Todhetley," she went on, in deprecation; "but indeed there lies upon me a dread--an apprehension that startles me. I dare say I express myself badly; but it is there. And, do you know, Jack has lately experienced the same sensation; he told me so on Sunday. He said it was like an instinct of coming evil." "Then that accounts for it," cried the Squire, considerably relieved, and wondering how Jack could be so silly, if she was. "If your husband told you that, Alice, of course the first thing you'd do would be to go and dream of it." "Perhaps so. What he said made no impression on me; he laughed as he said it: I don't suppose it made much on him. Please keep the paper." The Squire carried the paper upstairs and locked it up in the little old walnut bureau in his bedroom. He told Alice where he had put it. And she, declining any refreshment, left again with little Polly for Timberdale Rectory.