He kissed her, and with his arm around her waist led her through the dark hall to the door of her room, and kissed her again.  And again, as she stood and watched there, he turned on the threshold of the den and threw one more kiss across the darkness, and his face shone with a smile that sent her to bed, smiling through her tears.  She lay in the darkness, fragrant of honeysuckle outside, and her sore heart was full of the boys—­of Hugh struggling in his crisis; still more, perhaps, of Brock whose birthday it was, Brock in France, in the midst of “many and great dangers,” yet—­she knew—­serene and buoyant among them because his mind was “stayed.”  Not long these thoughts held her; for she was so deadened with the stress of many emotions that nature asserted itself and shortly she feel asleep.

It may have been two or three hours she slept.  She knew afterward that it must have been at about three of the summer morning when a dream came which, detailed and vivid as it was, probably filled in time only the last minute or so before awakening.  It seemed to her that glory suddenly flooded the troubled world; the infinite, intimate joy, impossible to put into words, was yet a defined and long first chapter of her dream.  After that she stood on the bank of a river, a river perhaps miles wide, and with the new light-heartedness filling her she looked and saw a mighty bridge which ran brilliant with many-colored lights, from her to the misty further shore of the river.  Over the bridge passed a throng of radiant young men, boys, all in uniform.  “How glorious!” she seemed to cry out in delight, and with that she saw Brock.

Very far off, among the crowd of others, she saw him, threading his way through the throng.  He came, unhurried yet swift, and on his face was an amused, loving smile which was perhaps the look of him which she remembered best.  By his side walked old Mavourneen, the wolf-hound, Brock’s hand on the shaggy head.  The two swung steadily toward her, Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time.  Above the sound Brock’s voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, like pain.

“Mother, I’m coming to take Hughie’s hand—­to take Hughie’s hand,” he repeated.

And with that Mavourneen’s great cry rose above his voice.  And suddenly she was awake.  Somewhere outside the house, yet near, the dog was loudly, joyfully crying.  Out of the deep stillness of the night burst the sound of the joyful crying.