Now Calvin Parks had been dreaming, a thing that seldom occurred in the simple organism of his brain. He dreamed that he was on a lonely road, with high, rocky banks on either side; and that he was pursued by two black hooded snakes with glittering eyes, that reared and hissed on either side of him, and darted at him as he sped along. He tried to cry out, but found no voice. As he panted on in terror and anguish, thinking every moment to feel the venomed fangs in his flesh, suddenly a bird came flying down, a blue bird with a white breast, and took the evil creatures one after the other and flung them far from his path. And as he looked, still panting and breathless, the bird turned into Mary Sands in her blue dress and white apron, and she cried—"Wake up, Calvin Parks! wake up!"
He opened his eyes, dim and bewildered with sleep. The vision was still before him, the trim blue and white figure, the pretty brown hair, the hazel eyes full of anxious tenderness. Still bewildered, still only half awake, he opened his arms and gathered the little figure into them. "My woman!" he said. "My woman, before God and while I live."
"Oh! yes, Calvin!" said Mary Sands; and she hid her head on his broad breast and sobbed, a little happy sob.
So they stood for a moment, heaven as near to their middle-aged hearts as to any boy and girl lovers under the sun; then suddenly Calvin put her from him with a quick movement, and stepped back.
"I forgot!" he cried. "Mary, I forgot. I—I spoke too soon."
"Too soon!" echoed Mary Sands.
"I've no right to you yet!" he cried. "I thought I had; I forgot last night. Mary, I won't ask for you till I have a right to. Yesterday I had the right, or thought I had; to-day I haven't. You—you'd better forget what I said—no! don't forget one word of it, but—but put it away till—some day—" his voice broke, and he turned away with something like a sob.
Mary Sands eyed him keenly; then she spoke in her usual quiet cheerful tone.
"Mr. Parks, would you just as lives light a fire in the stove? It's perishin' cold here."
Calvin started, and flung himself furiously at the pile of kindlings in the corner.