The Doctor answered her by silence and a look of grave assent.  He had never chosen to let old Sophy dwell upon these matters, for obvious reasons.  The girl must not grow up haunted by perpetual fears and prophecies, if it were possible to prevent it.

“Well, how has Elsie seemed of late?” he said, after this brief pause.

The old woman shook her head.  Then she looked up at the Doctor so steadily and searchingly that the diamond eyes of Elsie herself could hardly have pierced more deeply.

The Doctor raised his head, by his habitual movement, and met the old woman’s look with his own calm and scrutinizing gaze, sharpened by the glasses through which he now saw her.

Sophy spoke presently in an awed tone, as if telling a vision.

“We shall be havin’ trouble before long.  The’ ‘s somethin’ comin’ from the Lord.  I’ve had dreams, Doctor.  It’s many a year I’ve been a-dreamin’, but now they’re comin’ over ‘n’ over the same thing.  Three times I’ve dreamed one thing, Doctor,—­one thing!”

“And what was that?” the Doctor said, with that shade of curiosity in his tone which a metaphysician would probably say is an index of a certain tendency to belief in the superstition to which the question refers.

“I ca’n’ jestly tell y’ what it was, Doctor,” the old woman answered, as if bewildered and trying to clear up her recollections; “but it was somethin’ fearful, with a great noise ‘n’ a great cryin’ o’ people,—­like the Las’ Day, Doctor!  The Lord have mercy on my poor chil’, ‘n’ take care of her, if anything happens!  But I’s feared she’ll never live to see the Las’ Day, ’f ‘t don’ come pooty quick.”

Poor Sophy, only the third generation from cannibalism, was, not unnaturally, somewhat confused in her theological notions.  Some of the Second-Advent preachers had been about, and circulated their predictions among the kitchen—­population of Rockland.  This was the way in which it happened that she mingled her fears in such a strange manner with their doctrines.

The Doctor answered solemnly, that of the day and hour we knew not, but it became us to be always ready.—­“Is there anything going on in the household different from common?”

Old Sophy’s wrinkled face looked as full of life and intelligence, when she turned it full upon the Doctor, as if she had slipped off her infirmities and years like an outer garment.  All those fine instincts of observation which came straight to her from her savage grandfather looked out of her little eyes.  She had a kind of faith that the Doctor was a mighty conjurer, who, if he would, could bewitch any of them.  She had relieved her feelings by her long talk with the minister, but the Doctor was the immediate adviser of the family, and had watched them through all their troubles.  Perhaps he could tell them what to do.  She had but one real object of affection in the world,—­this child that she had tended from infancy to womanhood.  Troubles were gathering thick round her; how soon they would break upon her, and blight or destroy her, no one could tell; but there was nothing in all the catalogue of terrors which might not come upon the household at any moment.  Her own wits had sharpened themselves in keeping watch by day and night, and her face had forgotten its age in the excitement which gave life to its features.