"The last night that I was so very ill I had an awful dream about it. I thought that suddenly I looked at it, and a queer change had happened to the whole thing. Instead of the youngster being dressed up in that natty little silk coat with lace frills at his neck and wrists and the jewelled star on his chest and the little riding-whip, his clothes were all queer and ragged. He had a bright red cap of some kind on his head, and his hair was matted and tangled. Instead of being plump and smiling, he was thin and half-starved looking, and the tears were running down his cheeks. And while I looked, he suddenly held out his arms to me, as if for help. I felt as if I must get right out of bed and give him some assistance,—I simply must. And I guess I tried, too, for I remember the nurses held me down. Even after I was much better, I couldn't seem to get over the horror of that dream. I hated to look at the picture after that, for fear I'd see it again the same way."
"But you also said," Sue reminded him, "that Monsieur acted queerly about the picture, too. What did he do?"
"Oh, yes, that's another thing," added Louis. "He used to stand in front of it the longest time, gazing at it as steadily as if it were the most wonderful thing on earth. Next he would turn and stare at me, and then look back again at the picture, till I could have yelled, it made me so nervous. It was mostly when he thought I was asleep or in a stupor, but I wasn't either one of those things half as much as they thought I was. Once he came and stood over me, after I had had my eyes shut for a long time, and I heard him muttering something about 'the temple look,' whatever he could have meant by that. It all seemed horribly uncanny. I didn't like it at all. I never was so glad of anything in my life as to get out of that place and back to my own room at last."
"But, Louis," began Carol, in an awed tone, "whatever do you suppose caused you to have that queer dream? It's one of the queerest things I ever heard. Did Monsieur ever say anything to you about the picture that would make you think of a thing like that?"
"Not a single thing," declared the boy stoutly, "except what he said about the 'heroic martyr' business, and I can't believe I would have made up the rest out of my head. It's singular—"
At this moment, however, Dave came in, and the conversation shifted to other topics.
April 8. Carol and I debated a long while as to whether it would be a good idea to tell the Imp what Louis had told us last night. At first Carol was shocked at the idea of such a thing, and she looked at me as though I'd proposed to dynamite her house. But I reminded her that the Imp had been awfully amiable to us of late, and really it mightn't be such a bad scheme to let her into this, especially as she had some inside information of her own that some time she might be able to give us the benefit of. This settled Carol's doubts, so to-day we told the Imp.
When we came to the part about Louis's dream, she grabbed my arm and said:
"Are you making this up, or is it really true?" I never saw her so excited before.
"Of course it's true!" I said. "It's just exactly what Louis told us."