Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/191

 "Your quietness tells me that you understand." Her voice was touched with ecstasy. "You do not answer or seek to console me. You are the one I have dreamed of in prison. Where is your hand?"

Again Northcote yielded to her entreaty, this time without a sense of repulsion.

"Yes, this is the hand that has been around me in the darkness, when I have shuddered in my dreams."

"It is wonderful," said Northcote, "that you should know that you will be able to lean upon me."

"I know what your voice is like also, although it is so vague and distant to me now. I know the words it will speak to-morrow, when it asks them to be merciful. I know that all I have seen in my dreams will take place."

"It must be a grievous thing to go to sleep in a prison," said Northcote, uttering a half-formed thought without consideration of his words. "Or perhaps it is more dreadful to awaken in one."

"The going to sleep and the awakening are not so terrible as the dreams that come. That in which I saw you first, in which I first heard your voice, in which I first touched the hand that will deliver me, was most dreadful in its nature. My weak mind fell down under it. I think I could not live through such a vision again."

"How strange are these visitations!" said Northcote. "How awful, how mysterious! When did this dream come to you?"

"Last night about the hour of ten; the first time I had closed my eyes for three days."

Northcote recoiled with a shudder. The precis