The Argosy — page 372: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ee as } | | i | Verena Fontaine’s Rebellion. 353 he who had now committed the murder. I left Jack, and told this to someone connected with the ship, its owner, I think. He laughed at the words, saying that the gentleman I would accuse was of high authority in the town, one of its first magnates, That he had done it, however high he might be, I felt perfectly certain ; but nobody would listen to me, nobody would heed so improbable a tale: and, in the trouble this brought me, I awoke. Suwch trouble! Nothing like it could be felt in real life. ‘‘’'That was dream the first. ‘‘T lay awake for some little time thinking of it, and then went to sleep again: and this was dream the second. ‘The dream seemed to recommence from where it had left off. It was afternoon. I was in a large open carriage, going through the streets of the town, the ship’s owner (as I say I think he was) sitting beside me. In passing over a bridge we saw two gentlemen walking towards us arm-in-arm on the foot-path, one of them an officer in a dusky old red uniform and cocked hat, the other a tall, evil-looking, dark man, who wore a long brown coat and kept his eyes on the ground, Though I had never seen him in my life before, I 2ew it was the guilty man; he had killed the other, committed the crime in secret: but ere I could speak, he who was sitting with me said, ‘There’s the gentleman you would have accused this morning. He stands before everybody else in the town. Fancy your accusing zm of sucha thing!’ It seemed to me that I did not answer, could not answer for the pain. ‘That he was guilty I knew, and not Jack, but I had no means of bringing it home to him. He and the man in uniform walked on in their secure immunity, and I went on in the carriage in my pain. ‘The pain awoke me. ‘* And now it only remains for me to declare that I have set down this singular dream truthfully, word for word ; and I shall seal it up and keep it. It may be of use if any trouble falls upon Jack, as the dream seems to foretell—and of some trouble in store for him he has already felt the shadow. So strangely vivid a dream, and the.- intense pain it brought and leaves with me, can hardly have visited . me for nothing.—ALICE TANERTON.” That was all the paper said. The Squire poring his good old: spectacles over it, shook his head as Alice pointed out the descrip- tion of the guilty man, how exactly it tallied with the appearance of © Sir Dace Fontaine; but he only repeated Paul the lawyer’s words,. * One cannot act upon a dream.” “Tt was Sir Dace; it was Sir Dace,” reiterated Alice, clasping her hands piteously. ‘I am as sure of it as that I hope to go to Heaven.” And I drove her home in the belief. There ensued a commotion. Not a commotion to be told to the parish, but a private one amidst ourselves. I never saw a woman in such a fever of excitement as Alice Tanerton was in from that day, or anyone take up a matter so warmly. | WOOL, «xXx, COM EloOOKS GO