Entering his mother's boudoir one day Halpin
Frayser kissed her upon the forehead, toyed for a
moment with a lock of her dark hair which had es-
caped from its confining pins, and said, with an ob-
vious effort at calmness:
'Would you greatly mind, Katy, if I were called
away to California for a few weeks?'
It was hardly needful for Katy to answer with her
lips a question to which her tell-tale cheeks had made
instant reply. Evidently she would greatly mind;
and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyes
as corroborative testimony.
'Ah, my son,' she said, looking up into his face
with infinite tenderness,' I should have known that
this was coming. Did I not lie awake a half of the
night weeping because, during the other half, Grand-
father Bayne had come to me in a dream, and stand-
ing by his portrait--young, too, and handsome as
that--pointed to yours on the same wall? And
when I looked it seemed that I could not see the
features; you had been painted with a face cloth,
such as we put upon the dead. Your father has
laughed at me, but you and I, dear, know that such
things are not for nothing. And I saw below the edge
of the cloth the marks of hands on your throat--
forgive me, but we have not been used to keep such
things from each other. Perhaps you have another
interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you
will go to California. Or maybe you will take me
with you?'
It must be confessed that this ingenious interpre-
tation of the dream in the light of newly discovered
evidence did not wholly commend itself to the son's
more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least,
a conviction that it foreshadowed a more simple and
immediate, if less tragic, disaster than a visit to the
Pacific Coast.
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