Then Joseph said, “This is what your dream means.  The three branches mean three days.  In three days, king Pharaoh shall call you out of prison and shall put you back in your place; and you shall stand at his table, and shall give him his wine, as you have given it before.  But when you go out of prison, please to remember me, and try to find some way to get me, too, out of this prison.  For I was stolen out of the land of Canaan, and sold as a slave; and I have done nothing wrong to deserve being put in this prison.  Do speak to the king for me, that I may be set free.”

Of course, the chief butler felt very happy to hear that his dream had so pleasant a meaning.  And the chief baker spoke, hoping to have an answer as good: 

“In my dream,” said the baker, “there were three baskets of white bread on my head, one above another, and on the topmost basket were all kinds of roasted meat and food for Pharaoh; and the birds came, and ate the food from the baskets on my head.”

And Joseph said to the baker: 

“This is the meaning of your dream, and I am sorry to tell it to you.  The three baskets are three days.  In three days, by order of the king you shall be lifted up, and hanged upon a tree; and the birds shall eat your flesh from your bones as you are hanging in the air.”

And it came to pass just as Joseph had said.  Three days after that, king Pharaoh sent his officers to the prison.  They came and took out both the chief butler and the chief baker.  The baker they hung up by his neck to die, and left his body for the birds to pick in pieces.  The chief butler they brought back to his old place, where he waited at the king’s table, and handed him his wine to drink.

You would have supposed that the butler would remember Joseph, who had given him the promise of freedom, and had shown such wisdom.  But in his gladness, he forgot all about Joseph.  And two full years passed by, while Joseph was still in prison, until he was a man thirty years old.

But one night, king Pharaoh himself dreamed a dream—­in fact, two dreams in one.  And in the morning he sent for all the wise men of Egypt, and told to them his dreams; but there was not a man who could give the meaning of them.  And the king was troubled, for he felt that the dreams had some meaning which it was important for him to know.

Then suddenly the chief butler who was by the king’s table remembered his own dream in the prison two years before, and remembered, too, the young man who had told its meaning so exactly.  And he said: 

“I do remember my faults this day.  Two years ago king Pharaoh was angry with his servants, with me and the chief baker; and he sent us to the prison.  While we were in the prison, one night each of us dreamed a dream; and the next day a young man in the prison, a Hebrew from the land of Canaan, told us what our dreams meant; and in three days they came true, just as the young Hebrew had said.  I think that if this young man is in the prison still, he could tell the king the meaning of his dreams.”