“Nothing really is strange,” said Hector MacNairn.  “Again and again through all the ages we have been told the secrets of the gods and the wonders of the Law, and we have revered and echoed but never believed.  When we believe and know all is simple we shall not be afraid.  You are not afraid, Ysobel.  Tell my mother you are not.”

I turned my face toward her again in the darkness.  I felt as if something was going on between them which he somehow knew I could help them in.  It was as though he were calling on something in my nature which I did not myself comprehend, but which his profound mind saw and knew was stronger than I was.

Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and to It, and that, without being troubled or anxious, I would just say the first thing which came into my mind, because it would be put there for me by some power which could dictate to me.  I never felt younger or less clever than I did at that moment; I was only Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing.  But that did not seem to matter.  It was such a simple, almost childish thing I told her.  It was only about The Dream.

CHAPTER VII

“The feeling you call The Fear has never come to me,” I said to her.  “And if it had I think it would have melted away because of a dream I once had.  I don’t really believe it was a dream, but I call it one.  I think I really went somewhere and came back.  I often wonder why I came back.  It was only a short dream, so simple that there is scarcely anything to tell, and perhaps it will not convey anything to you.  But it has been part of my life—­that time when I was Out on the Hillside.  That is what I call The Dream to myself, ‘Out on the Hillside,’ as if it were a kind of unearthly poem.  But it wasn’t.  It was more real than anything I have ever felt.  It was real—­real!  I wish that I could tell it so that you would know how real it was.”

I felt almost piteous in my longing to make her know.  I knew she was afraid of something, and if I could make her know how real that one brief dream had been she would not be afraid any more.  And I loved her, I loved her so much!

“I was asleep one night at Muircarrie,” I went on, “and suddenly, without any preparatory dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I had ever seen or known before.  Perhaps I was still in my nightgown—­I don’t know.  My feet were bare on the grass, and I wore something light and white which did not seem to touch me.  If it touched me I did not feel it.  My bare feet did not feel the grass; they only knew it was beneath them.