"I cannot understand Ian taking such a noticeable farewell. It would have been more like him to have said nothing to anyone, just resigned without reason or right about it. But doubtless he had a reason."
"He had. Two nights ago he had a dream."
"Never! Ian never dreams."
"He dreamt last Friday morning just at or before the streak of dawn. Listen!"
Then in an awed and whispering voice she related Ian's dream. The Major, who was naturally a psychic man and a great dreamer, listened with intense interest, but did not at once make any comment. After a short reflection, however, he answered with an air of complacent gratitude:
"God's dealings with the Macraes have ever been close and personal. Plenty of preachers are no doubt preaching this day what they do not believe, but they have not been shown and warned like Ian. I think his dream was a great honor and favor."
"You Macraes have a wonderful way of appropriating God. I dare say a great many ministers have been warned and advised as well as Ian."
"No, Jessy, they have not. If they had been warned as Ian was warned, they would have done exactly as Ian has done. Dreams are strange things. You cannot help noticing them—you cannot help being led by them. I wonder why."
"Because dreams belong to the Spiritual World, and humanity has an instinctive belief in this Spiritual World. You do not have to teach men and women to dream. A true dreamer has the gift in childhood as perfectly as in old age. There is no age, no race, no class, no circumstances free from dreams. God is everywhere and knows everything, and He speaks to His children in dreams and by the oracles that lurk in darkness."
"In my own life, Mrs. Caird, they have often read the future. How do they do it?"