"Yet I have, though, uncle," said Jane, pertinaciously, but appearing somewhat confused and embarrassed.
"What do you mean, girl?" said her uncle, fixing his keen grey eye upon her countenance scrutinisingly; for he observed her embarrassment. "What is this reason of yours for so unreasonable a fear?"
"Well, uncle, I'll tell you what it is at once," replied Jane: "I had a most frightful dream last night. I dreamed that a soldier—a tall, fierce-looking man—broke into our house in the middle of the night, with a drawn bayonet in his hand; that he murdered my sister before my eyes—I saw her blood streaming on the floor; and that, having done this, he seized me by the hair of the head, and was about to plunge his bayonet into my heart, when I awoke. It was a horrible dream, uncle, and has made such an impression on me—it was so fearfully true—that I cannot think of abiding longer in the house. It was this frightful dream that urged me in to see you to-day. I have not told my sister of it; for it would put her distracted."
Jane's uncle listened patiently, but with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, to the strange dream of his niece; and when she had done—
"Pho, pho! what stuff!" he said—"what absurd stuff! How can you be so silly, girl, as even to speak seriously, let alone putting any faith in such nonsense as this?"
"I cannot help it," interrupted Jane.
"Well, well—perhaps you cannot," continued Davidson; "but it is not the less ridiculous for that; and, if it were known, it would certainly get you laughed at. Pay no attention to such trash, Jane. Think no more of it; but return to Braehead, and proceed with your usual occupations, and I will come out in a day or two, to see how you get on."
To this he added the advice which he had already given, and in nearly the same words, but in vain. Nothing could drive the girl from her purpose—from her determination to leave Braehead. Finding this—
"Well, then," said her uncle, "at least remain where you are for a day or two, when I will come out and assist you in your arrangements, and in the disposal of your effects; you cannot manage these matters yourselves."
To this proposal Jane yielded a reluctant consent, but repeated her determination to leave the place as soon as possible, and to come into Glasgow to reside.