" I do that!" cried Sally, in a fever of excitement. " I fall back and faint dead away--dead away! For a long time. And I don't know nothing that goes on all the time. Oh, my! But I ain't begun to prophesy yet, that I knows on. Tell me, what is prophecy?"
"Something that comes true, or is likely to come true. Now, here and there your dream's a good deal like some of Joanna's dreams. She was a prophetess; my mother had some of her writings. Fine writings, promising fine things. You look out, Sally. You keep on dreaming and fainting dead away, and some day perhaps you'll prophesy."
Sally nodded. Her eyes were full of fire, her little lips were parted in wonder, and in her childish mind strange and yearning hopes and cunning designs were beginning to stir.
"That dream of yours," proceeded Seth Dumbrick, in all earnestness, "might signify something. There's a mighty deal in it to an understanding mind. If you were older than you are, Sally, I'd asked you to commence and prophesy."
Sally answered by another nod. Indeed, fascinated by the earnestness of the speaker, no less than by the mystery which seemed hidden in his words, Sally's head oscillated up and down with regular motion, following with ready acquiescence the current of Seth Dumbrick's utterances.
"Other people have had dreams," said Seth Dumbrick, "that signify something, and led to something. There was Maria Marten. You know about her."
Sally, who had seen the tragedy of Maria Marten, or the Murder at the Red Barn enacted at a penny show, replied eagerly:
"I've seed her! and I've seed the pickaxe--and the grave--and the blood!"
"That all came of a dream. A mole-catcher her father was, and she was a fine young woman. The girl went away from home one fine day, dressed up in man's clothes. She had a sweetheart, and she was going to meet him to be married. But instead of taking her to church her sweetheart took her to the Red Barn, and shot her. Now it was a year afterwards that Maria appeared to her mother in a dream----"
"Yes, yes!" cried Sally. "Dressed in a white bedgownd. She was at the show."