THREE DREAMS, & THEIR FULFILMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 29

THREE DREAMS, & THEIR FULFILMENT.

1. HIS " SPOOK," WAS IT Z 2. THAT BLACK OAT. 3. MUTTON AND MUSTARD.

{Specially written for the Witness Christmas

Number of 1894)

By ALEC ALAN a

HIS " SPOOK," WAS IT !

Daring my student days, and while I was at homo for the summer one year, I was studying some work that I had undertaken for the vacation. I was sitting by the kitchen lire intent on my work. Father and mother ware in bed in a room adjoining. They had been no more than 10 minutes in bed when I heard mother say hurriedly :

" Oh, Robert, Tom Brand's killed. I saw him thrown from his pony just beside a milestone. The pony shied and ho fell off. He fell on hia head, and he never moved."

"Tuts, tuts, NslHe," BMd father, "ye've been dreamin'. Turn on your othei side."

Iv a tuicute or two both were asleep again. When my father ceased speaki»g I happened to look at the wag-at-the-wa' hung in the kitchen ; it was a quarter to 10.

About 10 minutes passed, when mother broke out again :

"The pony has jast gotten to his door. There comes a lad with a lantern. He has run into the hoose again. There comes Jean. Oh, she's very auld-lookin'. There they go back the road wi' the powny I " " Nellie T Nellie 1 what are ye haiverin' aboot? Turn round again. What had ye for supper at a' 1 " "Dream or no dream, Robert; it's waesoine."

They were quiet again, and I sat still and studied early English, comparing it with German, old French, Danish, Norwegian, and Scotch, and, except in tho raatLer of spelling, which was rather erratic, changeful, and even fanciful, found little difficulty in comiug to the conclusion that the spoken language of the Scotch differed very little from it.

Ab tihe end of about quarter of an hoar mother burst forth a third time with :

" Oh- 1 Robert he is dead I I saw his face the noo, when they turned him ower. There, they've put him across the powny. I'm sure he r s dead. Puir Tom I "

" What has come ower ye the nicht, woman? Ye've had a terrible dreamin'. What hast been a' aboot ? "

Then mother went over very minutely all that she had seen, and added — rather superstitiously, I thought—" I'm cure something dreadful has happened to Tym. I dreamt it three times, ye see, an' it a' tallies." " We eJ, tirae'll tell," said father. " John will get word, an' come an' tail's." Then speaking to me, " Ye might go to bed now. The light through the half-open door is djsturbin' your mother's sleep." " Tery well, father," said I. " Wake me at 6, if I'm no up." " I'll be away to the farm by half- past 4," he answered, " and won't be back till halfpast 7. Yell have to trust to youx own getting up. Good-night— or is it good morning?"' ' •*' Oh, no ! only hventy minutes past 10/" Mother was up and about when I got out at 6' next morning. She asked me if I heard what she bad been dreaming about. I said:

"Yes, I heard all you aaid. Is that the Tom Brand who was a land steward over in Haddingtonßhire, and who came to see father and you with his brother John about four or five years ago ? " U Y«, I was engaged to be married to Tom before I saw your father.' He went away to another situation acrohs the Forth, an' somebody else- got roond him." It was thus simply and shortly that ihe told me her life's romance.

On the afternoon of the next day I was looking out at the door, and ,in front of the house, coming towards it, I saw John Brand. Ha said to me : " Is your father in? " I said, " He's in the garden. Mother's in. Is it true about your brother? " "What do you know about it?" asked

"Mother'H tell you. Come in. Mother I" I called into the kitchen, "here's John Brand. I'll fetch father."

I placed John in the parlour, and there he eat till my father came in. Mother came into the parlour too then. After they had both shaken hands with him, he said :

" I've a letter from Tom's wife, and she tells me Tom's dead. But this young man asked me, ' I» it.true about your brother ? ' Have you heard any kind of rumour or what?"

"No," said my father, "only the wife here had a very curious dream the night before last, just after she'd fa'en asleep, aboot 10 o'clock. Hoo did Tom meet his death ? "

"Read you that letter aloud," said he to me, as he handed me one he had taken from his pocket. What I read in the letter regarding Tom Brand's death was, in time and circumstances, an exact counterpart of what mother had seen in her dream and told us of at t7te time it was happening. When John Brand understood this, he said, •• It was nae dream ; it was second sicht." He and my father went away together next morning to the funeral in a country parish in Had<iingtonshire. They found that the milestone, at which Tom's pony had shied, had Yen repainted that day, while Tom had bern in at the Haddington weekly gr:?in muLk^L ; .^lso that Jean had grown vr^y oM-lookin;.', all the worse because shp *• *<! gv" " goc\ maflv ( "eeth out shortly befoi o l,c i.rtur.-e for a set cf n«w ones.

John, who had no I< :h,,j „ -is brothel's Widow* said. " Her new to-... -\\ sot ncr ug

a bit, an' wi' Tom'a life insurance will help her to get anither msn afore lang." We heard that she married a neighbourin? farmer, a widower, before the year was out.