He heard a sound in Dora's room. He wondered if anything was wrong, and as an anxious mother might have done, he listened attentively. He heard a low, rippling laugh, followed by prattling tones. The child was talking in her sleep. Her dreams must have been pleasant, for her lilting voice rang out again.
"It is beautiful on you, Betty! Maybe brother John will get me one, too. Then we can wear them to the church sociable, eh, Betty?"
"Brother John!" he echoed, softly. It was sweet and vaguely comforting to know that the little waif relied upon him even in her dreams. He crept into her room on his tiptoes, bent over Dora, and looked at her. What an angelic, spritelike creature she seemed in her white gown and golden hair! How delicate and refined her features and tapering hands! In the half-light he saw that she was smiling. Smiling! She had never smiled like that in the old house at Ridgeville. She had begun to smile and laugh and jest under his love and care, and he told himself that it should always be so.
He went back to his bed, turned his damp pillow over, and laid his head on a dry spot. As he lay trying to sleep, the visions of his dream began to hover over him, and, wincing and writhing with pain, he cried:
"Be a man, John Trott! It is your yellow streak again. Kill it now, or it will down you in the end!"