"No, I wouldn't say time drags," declared the sick man. "Time don't run more than sixty minutes to the hour with me, though I can't say it runs less, like it does for the young and hale and hearty people. Give me a new book and life don't drag. And there's always memory. I've got a very good memory--better than many who come to see me I reckon. My mind keeps clear, and I still have the power to go over my great runs with hounds. And I don't mix 'em. I can keep 'em separate and all the little things that happened. You'd think they'd get muddled up; but they do not." "That's wonderful," said Lawrence. "Yes, I can shut my eyes and get in a comfortable position and bring it all afore me and feel my horse pulling and my feet in the stirrups. And once or twice of late I've dreamed dreams; and that's even better, because for the moment, you're in the saddle again--living--living! When I wake up from a dream like that, I make a point of thanking God for it, Maynard. I'd sooner have a dream like that than anything man can give me now." "They're terrible queer things--dreams," declared the younger. "I've had a few of late. They take hold of you when your mind's more than common full, I reckon." "Or your stomach--so doctor says. But that's not right. I've stuffed once or twice--greedy like--just for the hope that when I went to sleep I'd be hunting, but it never did anything but keep me awake. No, dreams hang on something we can't understand I reckon; and why the mind won't lie down and sleep with the body, sometimes, but must be off on its own, we can't tell. But there's things said about dreams that ban't true, Lawrence. I read somewhere that you never see the faces of the dead in dreams. That's false. You do see 'em. I saw my brother none so long ago--not as he was when he died, but as a little boy. And dreams be very reasonable in their unreason, you must know, for I was a little boy too. I saw his young face and flaxen hair, and heard him laugh, and we was busy as bees climbing up a fir-tree to a squirrel's dray in a wood. A thing, no doubt, we'd done in life together often enough, sixty years agone; and 'twas put into my dream, and I woke all the better for it." "Don't you get no sad dreams?" asked Lawrence. "They come too. They leave you a bit down-daunted, I grant. And some be lost, because you can't call 'em home when you wake up. You'll dream a proper masterpiece sometimes and wake full of it; and yet, for some mysterious working of the brain, 'tis gone, and you try to stretch after it, but never can catch it again. I woke in tears--fancy! Yes, in tears I woke once, long ago now; and for the life of me I didn't know what fetched 'em out of my eyes." "Perhaps you'd had a cruel bout of pain while you was asleep?" "No, no; pain don't get tear or groan out of me. I'll never know what it was." He broke off suddenly, for a previous speech of his visitor gave him the opening he desired.