Dallas stopped short. "Is my father coming to live here?"
"No, lad—have you no woods and fields in your own country?"
The boy was intensely excited. "If my father lives in the country," he said slowly, "I can have Prince Fetlar with me all the time," and he threw his arm over my neck. "Also I can have a cow and hens and a dog or two. Oh! what a beautiful blow! Is that what is to shock me into telling the truth?"
"No, my boy—it is something about your mother."
"My mother, my mother," repeated the boy passionately. "Oh! if she had only lived. What could we not have done, my father and I?"
"Did you ever hear of departed ones coming back to earth?" asked Mr. Devering softly.
My young master wrinkled his eyebrows. "Sometimes," he said; "sometimes, Uncle, I think I see misty shapes in the clouds or in moonlight. It pleases me. I am not afraid. I have even imagined a lady in a long flowing cloak. Something stretches out like arms. I think it is my mother. Then I dream of her, always so pleasantly—Oh! how can boys ever be cross to their mothers?"
"My lad," said his uncle dreamily, "if you think of your mother in that way she is not dead. She may come back to you."
"What do you mean?" asked the boy in a puzzled voice.
"A great man has said that when we speak or think of our dead they live again. I believe that you will see your mother some day."