“Was the ship the Rose of Delhi?”
“I don’t know. The owner, sitting with me in the carriage, was not either of the owners of the Rose of Delhi, whom I know well; this was a stranger. We were going over a bridge. Walking towards us on the pavement, I saw two gentlemen arm-in-arm: one an officer in a dusky old red uniform and cocked-hat; the other an evil-looking man who wore a long brown coat. He walked along with his eyes on the ground. I knew him by intuition—that it was the man who had had the quarrel years before, and who had done the murder now. ‘There’s the gentleman you would have accused,’ said my companion before I could speak, pointing to this man: ‘he stands higher in position than anybody else in the town.’ They walked on in their security, and we drove on in our pain. I ought to say in my pain, for I alone felt it. Oh, I cannot tell you what it was—this terrible pain; not felt so much, it seemed, because my husband could not be cleared, as for his sadness and sorrow. Nothing like it, I say, can ever be felt on earth.”
“And what else, Alice?”
“That is all,” she sighed. “I awoke for good then. But the pain and the fear remain with me.”
“Perhaps, child, you are not very well?—been eating green gooseberries, or some such trash. Nothing’s more likely to give one bad dreams than unripe fruit.”
“Why should the dream have left this impression of evil upon me—this weight of fear?” cried Alice, never so much as hearing the pater’s irreverent suggestion. “If it meant nothing, if it were not come as a warning, it would pass from my mind as other dreams pass.”
Not knowing what to say to this, the Squire said nothing. He and Tod both saw how useless it would be; no argument could shake her faith in the dream, and the impression it had left.
The Squire, more easily swayed than a child, yet suspecting nothing of the news that was on its way to Timberdale, quitted the Rectory and went home shaking his head. Alice’s solemn manner had told upon him. “I can’t make much out of the dream, Joe,” he remarked, as they walked back through the Ravine; “but I don’t say dreams are always to be ridiculed, since we read of dreams sent as warnings in the Bible. Anyhow, I hope Jack will make a good voyage. He has got home safe and sound from other voyages: why should he not from this one?”
Before that day was over, they saw Alice again. She walked over to Crabb Cot in the evening with her little girl—a sprightly child with Jack’s own honest and kindly eyes. Alice put a sealed paper into the Squire’s hand.