“The writing bug has got him, root and branch. He’s burrowed in his hole and wants the earth to tumble in over him. Talk about letting sleeping dogs lie. Lord! they’re nothing to the animals of Northrup’s type. And some darn 57 fools”––Manly was thinking of Kathryn––“go nosing around and yapping at the creatures’ heels and feel hurt when they turn and snap.”
And Northrup, in his quiet room at the inn, slept at night like a tired boy and dreamed. Now when Northrup began to dream, he was always on the lookout. A few skirmishing, nonsensical dreams marked a state of mind peculiarly associated with his best working mood. They caught and held his attention; they were like signals of the real thing. The Real Thing was a certain dream that, in every detail, was familiar to Northrup and exact in its repetition.
Northrup had not been long at the inn when the significant dream came.
He was back in a big sunny room that he knew as well as his own in his mother’s house. There he stood, like a glad, returned traveller, counting the pieces of furniture; deeply grateful that they were in their places and carefully preserved.
The minutest articles were noted. A vase of flowers; the curtains swaying in the breeze; an elusive odour that often haunted Northrup’s waking hours. The room was now as it always had been. That being assured, Northrup, still in deep sleep, turned to the corridor and expectantly viewed the closed doors. But right here a new note was interjected. Previously, the corridor and doors were things he had gazed upon, feeling as a stranger might; but now they were like the room; quite his own. He had trod the passage; had looked into the empty rooms––they were empty but had held a suggestion of things about to occur.
And then waking suddenly, Northrup understood––he had come to the place of his dream. The Inn was the old setting. In a clairvoyant state, he had been in this place before!
He went to the door of his room and glanced down the passage. All was quiet. The dream made an immediate impression on Northrup. Not only did it arouse his power of creation, strengthen and illumine it; but it evolved a sense of hurry that inspired him without worrying him. It was like the frenzy that seizes an artist when he wants to get a bit of beauty on canvas in a certain light that may change in 58 the next minute. He felt that what he was about to do must be done rapidly and he knew that he would have strength to meet the demand.
He was quickened to every slight thing that came his way: faces, voices, colour. He realized the unrest that his very innocent presence inspired. He wondered about it. What lay seething under the thick crust of King’s Forest that was bubbling to the surface? Was his coming the one thing needed to––to–––
And then he thought of that figure of speech that Manly had used. The black lava flowing; oozing, silently. The whole world, in the big and in the little, was being awakened and aroused––it was that, not his presence, that confused the Forest.
The habits of the house amused and moved him sympathetically. Little Aunt Polly, it appeared, was Judge and Final Court of Justice to the people. Through her he felt he must look for guidance and understanding.