Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I
had a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell
or not. We slept soundly--God's baby and all.
CHAPTER V.
MY DREAM.
I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those
who are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing
when they can associate it with something else with which they are
familiar. Such do not care to see that the thing with which they
associate it may be as mysterious as the other. For although use too
often destroys marvel, it cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of
our thoughts is just as wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and
white clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the
shadows another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why.
With an old man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but
looked about for a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our
dreams there is an immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather
narrow stone lying a few yards from me. I wondered how it could have
come there, for there were no mountains or rocks near: the field was
part of a level country. Carelessly, I sat down upon it astride, and
watched the setting of the sun. Somehow I fancied that his light was
more sorrowful than the light of the setting sun should be, and I began
to feel very heavy at the heart. No sooner had the last brilliant spark
of his light vanished, than I felt the stone under me begin to move.
With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care to rise, but
wondered only what would come next. My seat, after several strange
tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and then I
found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse
almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain,
as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the
direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never
thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly,
feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went
his joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster.
All at once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we
were on the borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me,
and the moor grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but
always recovering himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall
to rise no more, but as often he found fresh footing. At length the
surface became a little smoother, and he began a horrible canter which
lasted till he reached a low, broken wall, over which he half walked,
half fell into what was plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The
mounds were low and covered with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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