away her colour, and tears were thick on her cheek. She sat a
little while by the table to recover herself, still thinking, and
remembered that again last night she had dreamed the same dream about
fire in the thatch. Somehow there seemed to be an alarm in the night,
and they ran out of doors and found the corner of the roof on fire, over
the window with the wire network instead of glass. It ran up from the
corner towards the chimney, where the roof was mossy by the ridge. There
was no flame, but a deep red seething heat, as if the straw burned
inwardly, and was glowing like molten metal. Each straw seemed to lie in
the furious heat, and a light to flicker up and down, as if it breathed
fire. The thatch was very thick there, she knew, and recollected it
quite well in her dream; Iden himself had laid on two thick coats in his
time, and it was heavy enough before then. He talked about the thatching
of it, because it was an argument with him that straw had a great power
of endurance, and was equal to slates for lasting. This thickness, she
saw, was the reason the fire did not blaze up quickly, and why,
fortunately, it was slow in moving up the roof. It had not yet eaten
through, so that there was no draught--once it got through, it would
burn fast--if only they could put it out before then all might yet be
saved. In the midst of her anxiety Iden came with the largest ladder in
the rickyard, and mounted up, carrying a bucket of water. She tried to
follow, holding on to the rungs of the ladder with one hand, and
dragging up a heavy bucket with the other--the strain and effort to get
up woke her.

This dream had happened to her so many times, and was so vivid and
circumstantial--the fire seemed to glow in the thatch--that at last she
began to dread lest it should come true. If it did not come true of the
house itself, perhaps it would of the family, and of their affairs;
perhaps it signified that the fire of debt, and poverty, and misfortune
would burn them, as it were, to the ground. She tried to think whether
in the dream they were getting the fire under before she woke, or
whether they could not master it; it seemed dubious.

She did not tell her mother of the dream, afraid lest it might excite
her again; nor could she tell Iden, who would have laughed at her.

Yet, though she knew it was but a dream, and dreams have ceased to come
true, she did not like it; she felt uncertain, as if some indefinable
danger was threateni