Here was distinctly unpleasant food for thought. Already she had a firm grip on my waking hours, and there was no relish to the idea of her haunting my sleeping ones. The manner in which she possessed the town was astounding. She lurked wherever one went, popping out with the most casual remark when one was buying a pound of butter or a pint of clams. And yet, for all the daily allusions and innuendoes, one never got at the heart of the matter; one never rightly understood why Gram Perkins was and yet was not five feet below the sod. As for the dreamer of the dreams, one never found him clothed in anything more solid than words. I questioned Peddling Perkins one Friday when he came to our house with the makings of a chowder. “Tell me,” I began, “where does Zeb Perkins live and what relation is he to you?” He paused in his weighing. The scales hung from a rafter in his cart and worked somewhat mysteriously. He might have been weighing out the exact amount of relationship he cared to claim. “Fur as I can make out he’s sort of a third cousin.” “Did he ever tell you about those dreams?” “No, m’am!” He fixed me with a fore-warning eye. “What’s more, he hain’t never goin’ to. I seen Scip Perkins--time he told him. Scairt! Never seen a feller so shook up in his life. Didn’t take off his clothes and lay good abed fur a week. No, m’am!” I questioned the post-office Perkins one day: “Do you happen to know what Zeb Perkins dreamed about his grandmother?” “Dreamed! Gosh, what didn’t he dream? Think of anything a sensible woman, dead and buried fifty years, stands liable to do and you wouldn’t have the half of it.” He finished snapping his teeth together to signify that he had gone as far with those dreams as he intended to go--for the present, anyway. A few days later I took the matter to the village store. I even bought a chain and earrings of sealing wax to make my going seem less mercenary. “Those dreams,” I ventured, “how did they happen and do they belong entirely to Zeb?” “They do, God be praised!” Whereupon the storekeeper retired behind the necklace for a good two minutes, and then partially emerged to whisper, “No one’s layin’ any claim at all to those dreams but Zeb. And I’ve always thought myself if he hadn’t had them, no knowing what he mightn’t have had.” II For two recurring summers I stayed fixed at this point. And then came a spring when I slipped off early to the harbour for trout. The Perkins who drives the jitney met me at the wharf as I stepped from the Boston boat. “Hain’t a summer resorter nor a bluejay here yit,” was his greeting. “Weather’s right smart--nips ye considerable.” And it did. The water in the brooks was so cold my fingers remained stiff and blue all day. But the fishing was good, and in the end I caught something more than trout.