"I'll tell it now. I was walking on a green path and I met a man. The dream wouldn't let me see his face, but he was a big man, and in each hand he had a bird. 'Will you give them to me?' I said, for I didn't like to see them caught; but when he held them out to me, I couldn't take them. He said: 'They're larks, but I can't get them to fly.' 'They're sparrows,' I said, and so they were. 'No,' he said; 'for they've got wings.' We didn't seem to be getting much sense out of each other, so I went on; but in a minute I heard a beating sound, and I looked, and the birds had flown, and they'd grown as big as eagles, but the man had fallen down. It was as if their flight had overthrown him. And I ran to him, but he'd gone, and I kept calling, 'Edward Webb, Edward Webb'--for I knew it was him; but he'd gone, and I never saw his face; but, for all that, I knew what he was like. And now, go home, Alexander." "Have you nothing more to tell?" "Not a word?" "All right, then. Good-night. That's a good dream." The large, stone-floored kitchen, with its shadowy corners, was a lonely place to Edward Webb when he had gone. It had the feeling of a vault and this woman might have been a carved figure, keeping the door; for she sat quite still and looked on the ground; but, without warning, she began to speak in a rising murmur. "There's trouble somewhere," she said. "I can feel it." She stood up, lifted her arms to their utmost stretch, and dropped her hands on the high mantelshelf. "But I can't find it. It can't be yet." Suddenly she seemed to remember him, and spoke with a friendly brusqueness. "Will you come to the fire? I'll fetch a log." "Allow me." "No, I'll do it. Sit down. You don't look like shifting lumps of wood. You're town-bred, aren't you?" "Yes." He felt himself a sinner. "And you've been all over the world, perhaps." "No, no, indeed I haven't. I wish I had." "What d'you wish that for? I've never been in a train in my life." "You interest me. You have never wished to travel?" "Never yet. The time may come, though I have not seen it coming. What would I want to travel for? There's men and women in these parts, and God's earth; there's nothing elsewhere that I know of. I wouldn't say they're wrong who run about looking for things they'll never find; it's the way they're made, and they've got to work that way, but I can find all I want, sitting at my kitchen door." "You're fortunate." "I like a wood, and I've got it. I feel safe when there are trees round me. Why's that, do you suppose?" "I do not know. My little girl is afraid to sit in a wood alone. She says there are things watching her. She likes the open."