She was gurgling and spurting in an effort to regain her right of free speech when together the apparitions seemed to slip off the log upon the other side. “I tell you it’s Colonel Ledbetter’s Dixie,” she cried as a dog frisked out into the moonlight; “and sure’s you’re born that’s little Grover Cleveland! and he’s walkin’ in his sleep again—poor little soul! Git up Beau!” She clutched at the reins, but Thad caught her hand. “Poor little soul!” she repeated. “His gran’daddy’d go plumb distracted if he knowed that little soul was out on the mountings this time o’ night; nothin’ on him either, I reckon, but just his little shirt! Thad, if you don’t drive on right now, I’ll jump into the crick, I vow I will! I want to get my hands on him—poor little soul!” When Beauregard trailed out upon the other side Suly leaped to the ground. “I want to see how he looks when he’s took this-a-way.” The boy was several rods ahead trudging abstractedly along, his little, faded, blue-checked shirt playing about his knees, his bare feet taking the road unhesitatingly, his half-closed eyes looking neither right nor left nor seemingly before him. Curious, pitiful, Arsula walked beside him for a few steps in silence. He didn’t hear her nor the creak of the wagon behind her. His physical senses were in suspension. He was intently acting out some dream that dominated his little brain. Head and tail adroop, Dixie was following so closely that now and again his muzzle touched the little loosely hanging hand. He seemed to take no more notice of Arsula as she came abreast than did his child master; but _he_ was not walking in his sleep, for, though his dejected head never swerved, his eyes turned sidewise in their sockets and his lips wrinkled in very unbecoming folds above his teeth. “Grover Cleveland,” Suly spoke softly, for, despite her brave common sense, she felt awed in this presence of a ruling, supernatural mentality; besides she wanted to spare the little favourite the shock of a too sudden awakening. But the boy walked on. “Grover Cleveland, oh, Grover Cleveland!” she said more emphatically and gently put out her hand to take him by the shoulder. “Gr-r-r-r-r-r!” said Dixie. “Now look here Dixie Ledbetter,” she scolded severely, “you needn’t go to putting on any such airs as that when I’m around. I wouldn’t do Grover Cleveland mean a mite sooner’n you would, and you know it. And more than that, if I’d been in your place I’d have found some way to wake him up before he’d tramped this far in the cold. And more than that, t’other side the ford you went tearin’ off after a rabbit or a ’possum or a coon, and left him to find his way all by hisself. Now you get over there and don’t you say no more to _me_!” Ashamed of his shortcomings or awed by her gestures, which were imperious, Dixie slunk to the other side of his master who, partially recovered by the unusual tones, came to a stand dazed and trembling.