That was just the sort of remark calculated to place us at our ease. We chatted freely while the ladies drank a little champagne and nibbled a biscuit; I sampled the hotel whisky, and smoked, together with Karl, at the earnest request of our fair companions. Karl, by the way, did not know the taste of alcohol, or of any intoxicant. The wisdom of the gods kept him free from that obsession. Goodness only knows what would have happened if the man with a superhuman sense (which it was, according to our present lights) yielded to drink! Hence, when Mrs. Hutchinson, beginning at the end of the story, told us that she wrote to Mrs. Grier from Queenstown, and a computation of hours revealed that the mystery of the telegram was no mystery at all, the way was paved by growing familiarity to permit the conversation to wander off into less well-defined paths. For the good lady made no secret of the _raison d’être_ of her letter. “Maggie had a dream, or a vision--something akin to what my old Highland nurse used to call _taichitaraugh_, a Gaelic mouthful meaning ‘shadow-sight.’ It was so realistic that it nearly made her ill, and she startled me considerably, when she confided it to me, which was not until twenty-four hours later.” Mrs. Hutchinson, of course, could not guess what a spark on tinder was one of those time-worn words in Karl’s ears. I glanced at him to see if the winged barb had struck home, but I was not long in discerning that Maggie’s presence occupied his ordinary senses quite sufficiently to keep his telegnomic sense dormant. It might, indeed, stimulate and intensify the others, but no man would use a telephone or an opera glass to hear or see his best girl when she was seated in the same room as himself, would he? Science can do a lot for us, but I will back Dame Nature’s idea of a magnet in the shape of a pretty woman against any wizard device of the latter-day alchemist. Then the mother, at Maggie’s request, essayed to give us the history of an afternoon dream on board the good ship _Merlin_. The day was Sunday, and the weather had been bad. The ship was traversing that choppy belt of the Atlantic which makes the day of rest so particularly unrestful in the majority of vessels sailing from New York or Liverpool on a Wednesday. Indeed, the “White Star Sunday” is an ocean proverb. “Neither of us felt equal to taking luncheon in the saloon,” said she, “so a deck-steward brought us some tempting dishes. The sea subsided rapidly under the change of wind, and we were comfortable enough after our meal. I fell into a slight doze. Maggie says she did not.” “No, mother, I am sure I was awake, because I was running over in my mind Almaviva’s song, ‘Ecco ridente il cielo,’ with the guitar accompaniment for the violins,” interrupted Maggie.