I had a dream about Bessie on the night before—a dream that made me uncomfortable and gave me much cause for thought; and so a vague presentiment of coming evil clouded the joy of my returning home.
I had seen Bessy in her beauty and her bravery as the hop queen; but she was calling on me to protect her—for she was struggling to free herself from the embraces and the blandishments of a handsome and blasé-looking man, whose costume and bearing were alike fashionable and distinguished. Close by them, looking on evidently with amusement, was his friend, a hook-nosed, grim, and sombre-looking fellow, with a black moustache, and malevolent eyes, who held me back as with a grasp of iron, while uttering a strange, chuckling laugh, the sound of which awoke me. But the faces of those men made a vivid and painful impression upon me; for the whole vision seemed so distinct and real, that I believed I should recognize them anywhere.
I spoke to Tom Inches, our Scotch pay-sergeant, about it, and he, being a great believer in dreams, assured me that it was ominous of some evil that would certainly happen to Bessie or to me, or to us both.
"For you must know, Bob," he continued, "that in sleep the soul seems to issue from the body, and to attain the power of looking into the future; for time or place, distance or space, form no obstruction then; so the untrammelled spirit of the dreamer may see the future as well as the past, and know that which is to happen as well as that which has happened."
The Scotchman's words had a solemnity about them that rendered me still more uneasy; but I strove to shake off care, and already saw in anticipation my mother's cottage among the woodlands of the Weald.
Every pace drew me nearer home, and I trod gaily on, with my knapsack on my back, and only a crown piece in my pocket. My purse was light; but, save for that ugly dream, my heart was lighter still, as I thought of Bessie Leybourne.
I had left the railway station some miles behind. It was Christmas Eve. The Weald of Kent spread before me; not as I had seen it last in its summer greenness, but covered deep with snow, over which the sun, as he set, shed a purple flush, that deepened in the shade to blue, and made the icicles on every hedge and tree glitter with a thousand prismatic colours.
Red lights were beginning to twinkle through the leafless copses from cottage windows, and heavily the dun winter smoke was curling in the clear mid air, from many a house and homestead, and from the clustered chimney stalks of the quaint and stately old rectory.
An emotion of bitterness came over me, on passing this edifice, with all its gables and lighted oriel windows.
I had no great love for the rector. When a boy I had found in our garden a pheasant, which he, the Rev. Dr. Raikes, had wounded by a shot. Pleased with the beauty of the bird, I made a household pet of it, till his keeper, hearing of the circumstance, had me arrested and stigmatized as a little poacher, the rector, as a magistrate, being the exponent of the law in the matter. So I quitted the parish and its petty tyrant, to become a gunner and driver in the artillery, where my good education soon proved of service to me.