When Jerome drew near his own home he looked eagerly, and saw, with relief, that the white thickness of the storm was suffused with light opposite the kitchen windows.

“Everything all right?” he asked, when he entered, stamping and shaking himself.

Elmira was toasting bread, and she turned her flushed face wonderingly.  “Yes; why shouldn’t it be?” she said.

“No reason why.  It’s an awful storm.”

Ann was knitting fast, sitting over against a window thick with clinging shreds of snow.  Her face was in the shadow, but she looked as if she had been crying.  She did not speak when Jerome entered.

“What ails mother?” he whispered to Elmira, following her into the pantry when he had a chance.

“She’s been telling a dream she had last night about father, and it made her feel bad.  Hush!”

When they were all seated at the supper-table, Ann, of her own accord, began to talk again of her dream.

“I’ve been tellin’ your sister about a dream I had last night,” said she, with a curious, tearful defiance, “an’ I’m goin’ to tell you.  It won’t hurt you any to have your poor father brought to mind once in a while.”

“Of course you can tell it, mother, though I don’t need that to bring father to mind.  I was thinking about him all the way home,” Jerome answered.

“Well, I guess you don’t often think about him all the way home.  I guess you and your sister both don’t think about your poor father, that worked and slaved for you, enough to hurt you.  I had a dream last night that I ’ain’t been able to get out of my mind all day.  I dreamt that I was in this room, an’ it was stormin’, jest as it is now.  I could hear the wind whistlin’ an’ howlin’, an’ the windows were all thick with snow.  I dreamt I had a little baby in my arms that was sick; it was cryin’ an’ moanin’, an’ I was walkin’ up an’ down, up an’ down, tryin’ to quiet it.  I didn’t have my rheumatism, could walk as well as anybody.  All of a sudden, as I was walkin’, I smelt flowers, an’ there on the hearth-stone was a rose-bush, all in bloom.  I went up an’ picked a rose, an’ shook it in the baby’s face to please it, an’ then I heard a strange noise, that drowned out the wind in the chimney an’ the baby’s cryin’.  It sounded like cattle bellowing, dreadful loud and mournful.  I laid the baby down in the rockin’-chair, an’ first thing I knew it wasn’t there.  Instead of it there was a most beautiful bird, like a dove, as white as snow.  It flew ’round my head once, and then it was gone.  I thought it went up chimney.

“The cattle bellowing sounded nearer, an’ I could hear them trampin’.  I run to the front door, an’ there they were, comin’ down the road, hundreds of ’em, horns a-tossin’ an’ tails a-lashin’, flingin’ up the snow like water.  I clapped to the front door, an’ bolted it, an’ run into the parlor, an’ looked out of the window, an’ there on the other side, as plain as I ever see it in my life, was your father’s face—­there was my husband’s face.