Chapter 15 - Page 2

every night until an appointed event should be watched out! Which
of the vast multitude of travellers, under the sun and the stars,
climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains,
journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so
strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another; which of
the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end, be travelling
surely hither?

Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame, the
general's station and the drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster
Abbey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre
and the workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the
guillotine--the travellers to all are on the great high road, but
it has wonderful divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither
each traveller is bound.

On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been
heavy all day, dreamed this dream:

She thought she was in the kitchen getting the kettle ready for
tea, and was warming herself with her feet upon the fender and the
skirt of her gown tucked up, before the collapsed fire in the
middle of the grate, bordered on either hand by a deep cold black
ravine. She thought that as she sat thus, musing upon the question
whether life was not for some people a rather dull invention, she
was frightened by a sudden noise behind her. She thought that she
had been similarly frightened once last week, and that the noise
was of a mysterious kind--a sound of rustling and of three or four
quick beats like a rapid step; while a shock or tremble was
communicated to her heart, as if the step had shaken the floor, or
even as if she had been touched by some awful hand. She thought
that this revived within her certain old fears of hers that the
house was haunted; and that she flew up the kitchen stairs without
knowing how she got up, to be nearer company.

Mistress Affery thought that on reaching the hall, she saw the door
of her liege lord's office standing open, and the room empty. That
she went to the ripped-up window in the little room by the street
door to connect her palpitating heart, through the glass, with
living things beyond and outside the haunted house. That she then
saw, on the wall over the gateway, the shadows of the two clever
ones in conversation above. That she then went upstairs with her
shoes in her hand, partly to be near the clever ones as a match for
most ghosts, and partly to hear what they were talking about.

'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take
it from you.'

Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was
just ajar, and most distinctly heard her husband say these bold
words.