Footnote 1: The dream is not fiction: it is but transcribed, even to the minutest particular.

It was certainly a singular dream, well worthy of being recorded. Taken in conjunction with its notable working out, few dreams have been so remarkable. At least, if it may be deemed that subsequent events did work it out. The reader must judge.

Mr. and Mrs. Lake retired to rest as usual, eating no supper. When they had fish or meat with tea, supper was not served. On this evening he drank some wine-and-water before going to bed; she touched nothing. Therefore it cannot be thought she suffered from nightmare.

It was a singular dream; let me repeat the assertion. And it was in the earlier part of the night that it visited her. How soon after she went to sleep, how late, there were no means of knowing.

Part of the evening\'s doings came to her again in her sleep. She thought that Mrs. Chester called, went on to the Jupps\' house, returned to drink tea, and gave the invitation to go to her house at Guild on the Sunday--all just as it had been in reality. Clara also thought that she felt an insuperable objection to go, in spite of having accepted the invitation. Not the vague idea that had presented itself to her awake, the half-wish that she had not made the engagement, but a strong, irrepressible conviction that the going would bring her evil--but accompanied with a conviction, a knowledge, so to say, that she should go, that it was her fate to go, and that she could not avoid it. She dreamt that Mrs. Chester had departed, and that she was discussing the point with her husband They were in a kitchen, a large kitchen quite strange to her, and were standing by a small, round, dark-coloured table in its middle. The fireplace, as Clara stood, was behind her; the window, a wide one, with an ironing board underneath it, was in front; a dresser with shelves was on her left hand; and there were several doors, leading she did not know where. Altogether, the kitchen looked large and bleak, something like those we see in farm-houses: and, seated on a chair to the right, apparently engaged in sewing, and taking no notice of them, Clara suddenly saw Mrs. Chester. She and her husband were discussing earnestly--to go, or not to go. It appeared that both felt some evil was impending, but yet both knew they should go and encounter it, in spite of the hesitation: and yet Clara seemed to feel that her husband could have helped her to remain if he would. "What excuse can we make for declining?" she seemed to say to him, and then they both thought over various pleas, but none appeared to answer, and they came to the final conclusion that go they must; which they both had known throughout would be the conclusion. All the time they spoke, Mrs. Chester was sitting in her chair, listening, but taking no notice; and upon arriving at the decision Clara and her husband parted, he going towards one of the kitchen doors, she towards the window; but so sharp was the conviction that she was rushing upon evil, that she awoke.

Clara thought it a curious dream--curious because it represented what had actually occurred, and the bent of her own feelings; curious also because it was so unusually vivid, so like reality. She got out of bed quietly, not to disturb her husband, struck a wax match, and looked at the hanging watch. It was exactly three o\'clock.

But the dream was not yet over. She went to sleep again, taking up the thread almost at the point where she had left it. She remembered all that had passed, both of dream and reality; she remembered that she awoke in the certainty that she could not go beside the dreaded expedition; all that was plain in this, her second sleep, but she now began making strenuous exertions to escape. She did not see her husband again, but Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had joined Mrs. Chester, and the three seemed to be forcing her to go. Not by force of violence, but of argument, of persuasion; and she still seemed to know that they must prevail, that to withstand at the last would be beyond her power.

The time appeared to change to the morning of departure: or rather, with that inconsistency peculiar to dreams, it appeared to be the morning of the departure without having changed. Still she strove against it; not saying why, not hinting that she feared evil; of that, she had only spoken with her husband; but striving, not to go, by every possible argument, and by passive resistance. And--strange inconsistency!--it appeared that if she could have told them the reason of her reluctance, her dread of evil, all would have been well; but it was precisely to them she must not and dared not tell it.

To any who may fancy the description of the dream unnecessarily spun out, the small details too much dwelt upon, I would say just a word. It is difficult to shorten that real dream of midnight sufficiently for it to be told within reasonable bounds. No pen can trace its particulars as they appeared; no power of language describe them as they were pictured. And now to resume it.

Mrs. Chester and the Miss Jupps urged her to depart; were waiting for her. Clara Lake resisted. "There!" she suddenly exclaimed to them, "we cannot go. It is past ten: we have let the hour go by, and the train is gone." "Oh!" said Mrs. Chester, "we can get a carriage and overtake it." She went out with them--resistance appeared to be over; she felt that it was over, and that she could not help herself--went out to look for a carriage. They ran about, down lanes and in the open fields, and could not see one; but a butcher\'s cart came up in the lane; one of them said that would do as well as a carriage, and they all got into it. They seemed to fly, going along at a fearful pace, but through a most dreary-looking country, the skies gloomy, the scenery barren, and the road muddy, so muddy that it splashed up upon them as they sat: there were also shallow, dismal ponds through which they drove. All this haste seemed to be to catch the train, but suddenly a noise was heard behind them, and it was known that it was the train: they had gone so fast as to outstrip it. Their cart stopped to wait, and Clara, when the noise came close, looked behind, but could only distinguish something black which whirled by them, turned round, came back, turned again, and pulled up. "Why, it is a hearse!" she screamed out (but in surprise, not fear), to Mrs. Chester. Yes, it was a hearse, all black, and two men sat upon the box. Clara looked out, expecting to see the rest of their party on it, but there was no one but the two men: the one she could not see, for he seemed to hide his face; but she caught, fixed upon her, the strangely black eyes of the driver, the blackest eyes she ever saw in her life: of the rest of his face she remembered nothing. "Come," said he, "there\'s no time to lose;" and they all four descended from the cart. Clara got on to the hearse first, and was settling her cloak around her, when she heard the cart drive off, taking the road home again; and, seated in it as before, were Mrs. Chester and Mary and Margaret Jupp. "Why don\'t you come with me?" she called out; "why are you going back?" "No," said Mrs. Chester, "that hearse is for you, not for us;" and they drove off. The hearse also drove off the contrary way, and Mrs. Lake found herself sinking into its interior. She was calm enough for a moment, but suddenly she knew that she had been entrapped into it, and that she was being taken to her burial.

With a dreadful scream she awoke.

The scream awoke Mr. Lake. She was bathed in perspiration, and shaking as in an ague fit. In vain he asked what was the matter, whether she was ill: she could not speak to tell him, and it was several minutes before she was able in any degree to overcome the fright, or relate it to him.

Robert Lake had no belief in dreams; was given to scoff at them; but he had too much regard for his wife to attempt to scoff then, in her extremity of distress and agitation. He got up and lighted a lamp, for though morning was glimmering it could not be said to be yet light.

"I am quite certain that it is sent to me as a warning," she exclaimed; "and I will not go on Sunday to Guild."

"I never knew before that you could believe in dreams," he answered.

"I do not believe in dreams; I have never had any particular dreams to believe in. But you must acknowledge, Robert, that this one is beyond common. I cannot describe to you how vivid, how real everything appeared to me. And it was not one dream; it was two: that at least is unusual. The second dream was a continuation of the first."

"The one induced the other. I dare say you saw a hearse pass yesterday?"

"I have not seen a hearse for ever so long," she answered, still shivering. "But, go to your sister\'s, I will not. Thank heaven! though the power to refuse was not mine in the dream, it is in reality."

But that it was not the time to do it, he could have laughed outright at the superstitious folly. He spoke pleasant, loving words to her, almost as one would to a frightened child, trying to soothe her back to tranquillity.

"Clara; consider! the very fact of your being able to act as you please, which it seems you could not do in the dream, ought to convince you how void of meaning it was."

"I will not go to Mrs. Chester\'s," was all she reiterated, with a strange sigh of relief--a sense of thanksgiving that the option was assuredly hers.

"Wait for the morning sun," said he. "You will be in a different mood then."

She did not rise so soon as usual. She had got to sleep again at last, first of all making a firm inward resolution that no persuasion, no ridicule, no "morning sun"--in whose cheery rays things indeed wear a different aspect from what they do in the dark and weird night should suffice to alter her determination. The warning against going she fully believed to have been sent to her, and she would abide by it.

Mr. Lake waited breakfast for his wife. She came down in her delicate muslin dress, looking as pretty as usual. At first she made no allusion to the past night; neither did he--he hoped it was at an end; but when breakfast was about half over, she glanced up at him in her rather shy manner, speaking in a low tone.

"I have a request to beg of you, Robert--that you will not mention this dream to any one. I will make some other excuse for not going to Guild."

"Dream!" cried he, speaking with his mouth full. "Why, Clary, I had already forgotten it. And so will you before the day shall be over."

She shook her head.

"I shall send word to Penelope that I cannot go."

Mr. Lake put down his knife and fork and gazed at her in astonishment. To his sober, practical mind, his careless nature, this in truth savoured of the ridiculous.

"Clara, you will never be so foolish! I gave you credit for better sense. Dreams are all very well in their places--to amuse old women and children--but in these days they should not be allowed to influence actions. You can see the bright sunshine, the busy work-a-day world around you, and yet you can retain remembrance of a ridiculous dream! I thought dreams passed away with the night."

"Of course a great part of the vivid impression has passed with the night," she replied, confessing what was the actual fact; "but I will abide by the night\'s impression, nevertheless. I look at it in this light--my remaining at home can hurt no one, it cannot bring harm in any way, while my going may bring me harm; we cannot tell. I am fully decided," she continued, in a firm tone; "and do you eat your breakfast and cease staring at me."

"Perhaps you fear the train will come to grief, and pitch us all into coffins made to fit your hearse."

"Well, I don\'t know," returned Clara. "If I did get into the train on Sunday morning, I should be unusually pleased to find myself safe out of it again."

Mr. Lake said no more; in this frame of mind reasoning was useless. But he felt persuaded the fancy would wear away, and his wife go contentedly enough with the rest of them.

Nothing more was said that day, which was Friday. On the next day, Saturday, two of the Miss Jupps called on Clara, full of the following morning\'s excursion. A large family was that of the Jupps--six sons and six daughters, all living. The sons were out in the world--one in the army, one in the navy, one in the church, one reading for the bar, one here, one there; Oliver, the youngest of them, was just now at home. The six daughters were all at home, and marrying men seemed to fight shy of so large a host. Social, pleasant, chatty girls were they, the youngest two-and-twenty, the age of the eldest locked up in the church\'s register. Mr. and Mrs. Jupp were a quiet, inoffensive couple, completely eclipsed by their sons and daughters; not that any were undutiful, but the old people belonged to a bygone age, and were scarcely equal to the innovations of this. Mr. Jupp had once been high sheriff of the county: it was the one great event of the Jupps\' life, imparting to them an importance which their pride never quite lost sight of. They lived in a large house abutting on the street of Katterley, about five minutes\' walk from Mr. Lake\'s.

Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had come to gossip about the proposed Sunday excursion. They were pleasant, voluble girls (to pay them the compliment of still calling them girls), with light hazel eyes and reddish hair. The sisters were all much alike--these two, the eldest; Louisa and Rose, the youngest. They had on flimsy skirts, nankeen-coloured jackets, and straw hats. They sat in the shady room open to the trailing honeysuckles, talking to Clara.

"Our plans are changed," spoke Mary. "Oliver, Louisa, and Rose go tomorrow, returning home to sleep, and I and Margaret go over the next day."

"We think it would be so truly unconscionable to inflict four of us on Mrs. Chester at once, with her few servants, that we have written to tell her we will divide ourselves," interrupted Margaret, who liked to have her share of tongue. "Mamma says she wondered at our thoughtlessness when she heard us making the bargain."

"Mrs. Chester would not have made a trouble of it," answered Clara. "She is not one to put herself out of the way."

"No, she is very good; but it would have been imposing on hospitality," said Mary Jupp. "For that very reason, as mamma observed, we ought to spare her. So Louisa and Rose spend Sunday with her; I and Margaret Monday; Oliver goes both days."

"But you will remain for Tuesday?"

"No. Until she has her house in complete order it would be unfair to trouble her with night guests. You and Mr. Lake of course will remain the whole time. And now to deliver Louisa\'s message. Shall they call for you here tomorrow morning, or will you be at the train?"

"I am not going," replied Mrs. Lake.

"Not going!" echoed Mary Jupp. "Good gracious! Why not?"

"It is not quite convenient. Mrs. Chester does not expect me."

"But she did expect you!" exclaimed Mary, in wonder. "Oliver saw Mr. Lake that night after he had taken Mrs. Chester to the train, and he told him you were going. Did you not?" she added, appealing to Mr. Lake, who sat perched on a side table doing something to a fishing-line.

"All right," nodded he.

"Yes, we did promise; but since then I have altered my mind, and have written to Mrs. Chester," said Clara. "I shall go later, when she is more settled."

"Well, I never heard of such a thing!" cried Margaret Jupp. "Oliver and the girls will be in a way! I don\'t think they care to go but for the pleasure of your company. Mr. Lake, why have you changed your minds?"

"Ask Clara," returned he, without looking up. "It\'s her affair, not mine."

The delicate pink in Clara Lake\'s cheeks grew a shade brighter as the two ladies looked at her and awaited the explanation. Not choosing to mention the dream, she was at a loss for any sound plea to make.

"I seem to have a prejudice against going tomorrow," she said, feeling how lame were the words. "And--and I wrote to Mrs. Chester, telling her not to expect me."

"How very odd!" cried Margaret Jupp. They were keen-sighted, those girls, and felt sure there was some suppressed reason.

"The truth is, my wife has taken it into her head that Sunday travelling is sinful," cried Mr. Lake, partly to help Clara out of her dilemma, partly in the indulgence of the mocking spirit he liked so well. "If we do venture to go tomorrow, in the teeth of the sin, she thinks the engine will infallibly burst and blow us up."

Mrs. Lake felt vexed. It was precisely the fear her imagination induced her to take. Unable to conceive any other probable danger, she was unconsciously casting doubts on the safe convoy of the train. But she had not confessed it to him.

"Do not talk nonsense," she said to her husband; and Mary and Margaret Jupp looked from one to the other, not knowing what to think.

"My dear Mrs. Lake, they get to Guild for morning service, you know," spoke Margaret. "I don\'t see any great harm in going just that little way on a Sunday morning."

"Robert is very stupid to say such things," returned Mrs. Lake, driven into a corner. "I did not think anything about its being a sin. The sin is not my objection."

"The train runs whether we passengers go in it or not; so that our staying away is not of the least benefit in a religious point of view," logically argued Mary Jupp. "Do pray go, Mrs. Lake."

"Not tomorrow," Clara gently said, shaking her head.

"Can\'t you induce her, Mr. Lake?"

"I! I have wasted all my powers of oratory; I have tried persuasion; I have hinted at an illegitimate application of my riding-whip, and all in vain. She\'s harder than a brickbat."

The young ladies laughed. "Dear Mrs. Lake, you must go, if only to oblige us. Think of the disappointment to Louisa and Rose."

Clara remembered her dream: how Mary Ann and Margaret (the very two of the sisters now present) had striven in it to persuade her. The recollection only served to render her more firm. They began to fear that there would be no prevailing, and felt half inclined to be offended. "And yourself, Mr. Lake? Do you also remain at home?"

"Not I. I don\'t live in fear of the boiler\'s treachery."

"Of course I do not wish to prevent my husband\'s going," said Mrs. Lake, hastily.

"Though you know you would rather I did not," he rejoined.

"Well, of course, if there is to be--as you say, though I don\'t--a bursting of the boiler, it would be as bad for you to be in it as for me," she said, affecting a light laugh. The truth was, she did wish he would not go; she knew that she should feel more easy; though she would not ask him to remain, lest it might seem selfish. The Miss Jupps rose to leave.

"I hope you will think better of it," said Margaret. "Louisa was saying this morning how glad she was Mrs. Lake was going. She has been counting on you."

"Ah, well--she had better count upon me instead," cried Mr. Lake, as he left his seat to attend them to the gate. "And mind you give my love to Rose, and tell her I shall be a bachelor for the day."

"Don\'t forget that," put in Clara.

The two ladies walked away, commenting on what had passed. Clara Lake was a poor actor, and her manner had betrayed that the true reason had not been spoken. Margaret said she should put it down to "caprice;" but both acknowledged that they had never known Mrs. Lake capricious before.

Never did a more lovely day dawn than that Sunday in August. Not another word upon the subject had been exchanged between Mr. Lake and his wife since the visit of the Miss Jupps; she shunned it, feeling half ashamed of herself for her persistent folly; he had given the matter up for a bad job. After breakfast they stood together, looking from the open window. The church bells rang out; Mr. Lake\'s time for departure was drawing near.

"I must not miss the train," he carelessly observed. "\'Twould be a pity to lose the excursion such a morning as this."

"It is a most beautiful day," she sighed. "I almost envy you."

"Clara," he said, turning to her with a sudden seriousness of manner, "I ask you to be yourself. Lay aside this folly, and act as a reasonable woman ought. Put on your things and come with us."

She moved closer to him and spoke deprecatingly, "Do not be angry with me, Robert; I believe I am doing right to remain away. I must remain."

"Well, of all the simpletons that ever walked, you are about the worst," was his complimentary rejoinder as he caught up his gloves. "Good-bye, Clary," he added, stooping to kiss her.

"Oh, Robert, I hope you will come back safely!" she said, clinging to him as if she feared he was going away for ever; and the tone of her voice, full of mournful wailing, struck upon the ear of her husband.

Nevertheless he went off laughing, telling her not to fear--that he\'d come back with all his legs and wings about him.

On the platform he met Louisa and Rose Jupp under the convoy of their brother. "Then actually Mrs. Lake is not coming!" exclaimed Louisa.

"And I have only come to see you off," was Mr. Lake\'s response. "I am not going on to Guild."

"Oh, you barbarous deceiver!" quoth Rose. "Where are you going?"

"To church, as a respectable individual of modern society ought."

"I tell you what, Lake," interrupted Oliver Jupp, a dark, short young man, quiet and sensible, "this is not fair. These girls entrapped me into taking them, on the strength that you were to be one of the party, and it\'s too bad to shuffle off it."

"So it is," returned Mr. Lake. "But you must talk to my wife about it. I am the most hopelessly henpecked husband your worst fancy ever pictured; Caudle was nothing to it."

The train went smoothly off, and Mr. Lake returned home. His wife was leisurely attiring herself for church. She started when she saw him. "Why, Robert, what has happened?"

"Nothing. The boiler has not gone up yet; that calamity is expected to take place midway between here and Guild."

"Why have you come back?"

"I came back because I have got a silly child for my wife," he said, standing in front of her, and speaking half tenderly, half severely. "One who would have worried her foolish heart into a fever, had I gone, believing I should never come back alive."

She wound her arms round him and pulled his face down to hers in her fervent love, her tears falling upon it. "Oh, my darling! my dearest! you don\'t know how happy you have made me!" she passionately whispered. "How shall I thank you for giving way to my foolishness? I should have been in unhappy suspense all day long."

"I shan\'t give way to it the next time," cried he, as he kissed away her tears. "And I have told the girls what a henpecked husband I am, the slave of a capricious tyrant. Jupp won\'t be in a hurry to marry after my warning example before his eyes."

"The next time!" she repeated, with a sad smile. "Robert, there will be no next time. I shall never have such a dream again."

The Jupps went grumbling all the way to Guild. That is, the young ladies grumbled, and their brother listened. The disappointment was really great. Mr. and Mrs. Lake were great favourites with everybody; just those people that make society brighter for their presence.

"Margaret says Clara Lake was taken with a capricious fit."

"Nonsense, Louisa!" spoke Oliver, at length. "She has too much innate good feeling for caprice. Mrs. Chester has been at her domineering ways, I expect, and frightened her poor little sister-in-law."

Guild reached, they found their way to Mrs. Chester\'s house, which was just outside the town, some ten minutes\' walk from the station. It was a pretty place--old-fashioned but commodious; standing in the midst of a productive garden, with windows opening to a large lawn. It used to be called Guild Farm; Mrs. Chester had already changed that, and rechristened it "Guild Lawn." She had it at a cheap rent. There were two houses on the farm, and the farmer who rented the land lived in the other: to let this was so much gain to him. Guild Rectory, where Mrs. Chester had hitherto lived, was at the opposite end of the town.

The Reverend James Chester, her late husband, had been a poor curate for the greater portion of his life. He, his first wife (who was a cousin of the Jupps), and their only child, Anna, had lived on his country curacy of one hundred a year. He had no residence; and none, save themselves, knew the shifts they had been put to--the constant scheming and contriving they had been forced to exercise to live as gentlepeople and keep up appearances out of doors. His wife died; and, close upon it, the bishop gave him the living of St. Thomas, at Guild. Its emoluments were a small house and three hundred a year--great riches, in the eyes of the Reverend James Chester. He next married Penelope Hunter, who had two hundred a year of her own. Three children were subsequently born, Fanny, Thomas, and James. When the girl was ten years old and the youngest boy six, Mr. Chester died; and Mrs. Chester was left with Anna and her own children on her hands, a little good furniture and her two hundred a year to bring them up upon. So--as she told her half-brother--she had to scheme to live: she took this house, and hoped that would help her to do it.

"Well, and now what\'s the reason that Robert and Clara have not come?" began Mrs. Chester, without any other greeting, as she stood, bonnet and mantle on, to receive her guests. "I should like to know what Clara means by it! I had the coolest letter from her!--just putting off her visit to a future time, without saying with your leave or by your leave."

Fine nuts for the Miss Jupps to crack! They hastily recounted what had passed at their sisters\' interview with Mrs. Lake, and her husband\'s words at the train in the morning. There was no time for more.

"If you ask my opinion," said Louisa Jupp, as they hurried off to the nearest church, "I should say that Mrs. Lake has acquired an objection to Sunday travelling."

"What a crotchet!" concluded Mrs. Chester. "I never quite understood my brother\'s wife."