The woman was young and rather stout, with fine
large eyes and a certain grave beauty; my memory
of her expression is exceedingly vivid, but in dreams
one does not observe the details of faces. About
her shoulders was a plaid shawl. The man was older,
dark, with an evil face made more forbidding by a
long scar extending from near the left temple di-
agonally downward into the black moustache;
though in my dreams it seemed rather to haunt the
face as a thing apart--I can express it no other-
wise--than to belong to it. The moment that I
found the man and woman I knew them to be hus-
band and wife.
What followed, I remember indistinctly; all was
confused and inconsistent--made so, I think, by
gleams of consciousness. It was as if two pictures, the
scene of my dream, and my actual surroundings,
had been blended, one overlying the other, until
the former, gradually fading, disappeared, and I
was broad awake in the deserted cabin, entirely and
tranquilly conscious of my situation.
My foolish fear was gone, and opening my eyes
I saw that my fire, not altogether burned out, had
revived by the falling of a stick and was again
lighting the room. I had probably slept only a few
minutes, but my commonplace dream had somehow
so strongly impressed me that I was no longer
drowsy; and after a little while I rose, pushed the
embers of my fire together, and lighting my pipe pro-
ceeded in a rather ludicrously methodical way to
meditate upon my vision.
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