"Good morning, hossies!" she said cheerily. "I expect you're surprised to see me. I've got to get breakfast for all hands this mornin', and I'm goin' to begin with you. Mornin', colty! mornin', marey! mornin', John! mornin', old hoss! Oh! you naughty old hoss, who ever would have thought of your actin' that way at your time of life! I _was_ surprised--my goodness! who's this in the box-stall? Calvin Parks's Hossy? What upon earth! Why, you darlin', where's your master?" Hossy's explanations, though fervid, and accompanied by agreeable rubbings of a soft brown nose on her shoulder, were not lucid, and Mary gazed about her in bewilderment. "You never run away, hossy?" she asked; "you wouldn't do that! Then--where is he?" Just then a golden finger of sunshine slanted through the dusty window and fell on the harness-room door, which stood slightly ajar. Mary Sands ran to the door and peeped in. There, in the one chair tilted back, his feet on the stove, his head against the farther wall, sat Calvin Parks, sound asleep. "Oh! you blessed creatur'!" cried Mary under her breath. She stood looking at him, taking swift note of his appearance. "He's sick!" she said; "or he's been through the wars somehow. He looks completely tuckered out. There! he is not fit to be round alone, and that's the livin' truth. Oh dear! 'tis cold as a stone here; he'll get his death. Calvin! Mr. Parks! Wake up, won't you? Wake up!" Now Calvin Parks had been dreaming, a thing that seldom occurred in the simple organism of his brain. He dreamed that he was on a lonely road, with high, rocky banks on either side; and that he was pursued by two black hooded snakes with glittering eyes, that reared and hissed on either side of him, and darted at him as he sped along. He tried to cry out, but found no voice. As he panted on in terror and anguish, thinking every moment to feel the venomed fangs in his flesh, suddenly a bird came flying down, a blue bird with a white breast, and took the evil creatures one after the other and flung them far from his path. And as he looked, still panting and breathless, the bird turned into Mary Sands in her blue dress and white apron, and she cried--"Wake up, Calvin Parks! wake up!" He opened his eyes, dim and bewildered with sleep. The vision was still before him, the trim blue and white figure, the pretty brown hair, the hazel eyes full of anxious tenderness. Still bewildered, still only half awake, he opened his arms and gathered the little figure into them. "My woman!" he said. "My woman, before God and while I live." "Oh! yes, Calvin!" said Mary Sands; and she hid her head on his broad breast and sobbed, a little happy sob. So they stood for a moment, heaven as near to their middle-aged hearts as to any boy and girl lovers under the sun; then suddenly Calvin put her from him with a quick movement, and stepped back. "I forgot!" he cried. "Mary, I forgot. I--I spoke too soon." "Too soon!" echoed Mary Sands.