Sally nodded. She had never bestowed the slightest thought upon the matter, but if she had made it the subject of the most serious contemplation she could have had no other expectation than that of a certainty she would be a poor woman all her life. "Joanna had dreams, and prophesied. _She_ dreamt of angels and the devil, and had a fight with the devil." "Did she run away from him, and did he run after her," inquired Sally, almost breathless with excitement, for in her mind at that moment the devil stood for the new tenant who, in her own dream, had tried to destroy her treasure-baby. "That's not told," answered Seth Dumbrick. "But she beat him!" suggested Sally, with her little hands tightly clasped. "She beat him bad, did Joanna. My mother--she was a Devonshire woman, like Joanna--believed in her, and so did a heap of others. And now I come to think of it," said Seth, with a musing glance at the pretty child lying on his leather apron, "there's something strange in Joanna Southcott's name coming into my head in this way. For, you see, Sal, when Joanna was an old woman, she gave out that she was going to be brought to bed with a Prince of Peace; but she never was, more's the pity, for that's the very Prince the world wants badly, and never yet has been able to get. She used to go into trances, used Joanna, and prophesy." "Tell me," said Sally. "About 'em? Well, there were so many! She was always at it." "What's trances?" asked Sally, with feverish excitement, "and what's prophecy?" "Well, Joanna'd be sitting as you're sitting now, when all at once she'd go off--fall back or forward, insensible. That would be a trance. Then she'd dream something. Then she'd come to, and tell what she dreamt. That'd be a prophecy." "_I_ do that!" cried Sally, in a fever of excitement. "_I_ fall back and faint dead away--dead away! For a long time. And I don't know nothing that goes on all the time. Oh, my! But I ain't begun to prophesy yet, that I knows on. Tell me, what _is_ prophecy?" "Something that comes true, or is likely to come true. Now, here and there your dream's a good deal like some of Joanna's dreams. She was a prophetess; my mother had some of her writings. Fine writings, promising fine things. You look out, Sally. You keep on dreaming and fainting dead away, and some day perhaps _you'll_ prophesy." Sally nodded. Her eyes were full of fire, her little lips were parted in wonder, and in her childish mind strange and yearning hopes and cunning designs were beginning to stir. "That dream of yours," proceeded Seth Dumbrick, in all earnestness, "might signify something. There's a mighty deal in it to an understanding mind. If you were older than you are, Sally, I'd asked you to commence and prophesy."