And so I am driven, as before,
to accept the chance of her returning--a chance which I fear I am or may
be unable to control. Surely enough Aunt Janet did come in the morning, early. I was still
asleep when she knocked at my door. With that purely physical
subconsciousness which comes with habit I must have realized the cause of
the sound, for I woke fully conscious of the fact that Aunt Janet had
knocked and was waiting to come in. I jumped from bed, and back again
when I had unlocked the door. When Aunt Janet came in she noticed the
cold of the room. "Save us, laddie, but ye'll get your death o' cold in this room." Then,
as she looked round and noticed the ashes of the extinct fire in the
grate:

"Eh, but ye're no that daft after a'; ye've had the sense to light yer
fire. Glad I am that we had the fire laid and a wheen o' dry logs ready
to yer hand." She evidently felt the cold air coming from the window,
for she went over and drew the curtain. When she saw the open window,
she raised her hands in a sort of dismay, which to me, knowing how little
base for concern could be within her knowledge, was comic. Hurriedly she
shut the window, and then, coming close over to my bed, said:

"Yon has been a fearsome nicht again, laddie, for yer poor auld aunty." "Dreaming again, Aunt Janet?" I asked--rather flippantly as it seemed to
me. She shook her head:

"Not so, Rupert, unless it be that the Lord gies us in dreams what we in
our spiritual darkness think are veesions." I roused up at this. When
Aunt Janet calls me Rupert, as she always used to do in my dear mother's
time, things are serious with her. As I was back in childhood now,
recalled by her word, I thought the best thing I could do to cheer her
would be to bring her back there too--if I could. So I patted the edge
of the bed as I used to do when I was a wee kiddie and wanted her to
comfort me, and said:

"Sit down, Aunt Janet, and tell me." She yielded at once, and the look
of the happy old days grew over her face as though there had come a gleam
of sunshine. She sat down, and I put out my hands as I used to do, and
took her hand between them. There was a tear in her eye as she raised my
hand and kissed it as in old times. But for the infinite pathos of it,
it would have been comic:

Aunt Janet, old and grey-haired, but still retaining her girlish slimness
of figure, petite, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face lined with the
care of years, but softened and ennobled by the unselfishness of those
years, holding up my big hand, which would outweigh her whole arm;
sitting dainty as a pretty old fairy beside a recumbent giant--for my
bulk never seems so great as when I am near this real little good fairy
of my life--seven feet beside four feet seven. So she began as of old, as though she were about to soothe a frightened
child with a fairy tale:

"'Twas a veesion, I think, though a dream it may hae been. But whichever
or whatever it was, it concerned my little boy, who has grown to be a big
giant, so much that I woke all of a tremble. Laddie dear, I thought that
I saw ye being married." This gave me an opening, though a small one,
for comforting her, so I took it at once:

"Why, dear, there isn't anything to alarm you in that, is there? It was
only the other day when you spoke to me about the need of my getting
married, if it was only that you might have children of your boy playing
around your knees as their father used to do when he was a helpless wee
child himself." "That is so, laddie," she answered gravely. "But your weddin' was none
so merry as I fain would see. True, you seemed to lo'e her wi' all yer
hairt. Yer eyes shone that bright that ye might ha' set her afire, for
all her black locks and her winsome face. But, laddie, that was not
all--no, not though her black een, that had the licht o' all the stars o'
nicht in them, shone in yours as though a hairt o' love an' passion, too,
dwelt in them. I saw ye join hands, an' heard a strange voice that
talked stranger still, but I saw none ither. Your eyes an' her eyes, an'
your hand an' hers, were all I saw. For all else was dim, and the
darkness was close around ye twa. And when the benison was spoken--I
knew that by the voices that sang, and by the gladness of her een, as
well as by the pride and glory of yours--the licht began to glow a wee
more, an' I could see yer bride. She was in a veil o' wondrous fine
lace. And there were orange-flowers in her hair, though there were
twigs, too, and there was a crown o' flowers on head wi' a golden band
round it. And the heathen candles that stood on the table wi' the Book
had some strange effect, for the reflex o' it hung in the air o'er her
head like the shadow of a crown. There was a gold ring on her finger and
a silver one on yours." Here she paused and trembled, so that, hoping to
dispel her fears, I said, as like as I could to the way I used to when I
was a child:

"Go on, Aunt Janet." She did not seem to recognize consciously the likeness between past and
present; but the effect was there, for she went on more like her old
self, though there was a prophetic gravity in her voice, more marked than
I had ever heard from her:

"All this I've told ye was well; but, oh, laddie, there was a dreadful
lack o' livin' joy such as I should expect from the woman whom my boy had
chosen for his wife--and at the marriage coupling, too! And no wonder,
when all is said; for though the marriage veil o' love was fine, an' the
garland o' flowers was fresh-gathered, underneath them a' was nane ither
than a ghastly shroud. As I looked in my veesion--or maybe dream--I
expectit to see the worms crawl round the flagstane at her feet. If
'twas not Death, laddie dear, that stood by ye, it was the shadow o'
Death that made the darkness round ye, that neither the light o' candles
nor the smoke o' heathen incense could pierce. Oh, laddie, laddie, wae
is me that I hae seen sic a veesion--waking or sleeping, it matters not! I was sair distressed--so sair that I woke wi' a shriek on my lips and
bathed in cold sweat. I would hae come doon to ye to see if you were
hearty or no--or even to listen at your door for any sound o' yer being
quick, but that I feared to alarm ye till morn should come. I've counted
the hours and the minutes since midnight, when I saw the veesion, till I
came hither just the now." "Quite right, Aunt Janet," I said, "and I thank you for your kind thought
for me in the matter, now and always." Then I went on, for I wanted to
take precautions against the possibility of her discovery of my secret. I could not bear to think that she might run my precious secret to earth
in any well-meant piece of bungling. That would be to me disaster
unbearable. She might frighten away altogether my beautiful visitor,
even whose name or origin I did not know, and I might never see her
again:

"You must never do that, Aunt Janet.