nd he
come down to let her see him just as he was and she said it was the same
way he looked in the dream. He never would have his hair cut--father
wouldn't--and wore it in a queue. I remember seeing him with it when I
was a boy; but his second wife didn't like the looks of it, and she come
up behind him one day and cut it off with the scissors. He was terrible
worked up about it. I never see father so mad as he was that day. Now
this is just as true as the Bible," said Captain Sands. "I haven't put a
word to it, and gran'ther al'ays told a story just as it was. That woman
saw her son; but if you ask me what kind of eyesight it was, I can't
tell you, nor nobody else."

Later that evening Kate and I drifted into a long talk about the
captain's stories and these mysterious powers of which we know so
little. It was somewhat chilly in the house, and we had kindled a fire
in the fireplace, which at first made a blaze which lighted the old room
royally, and then quieted down into red coals and lazy puffs of smoke.
We had carried the lights away, and sat with our feet on the fender, and
Kate's great dog was lying between us on the rug. I remember that
evening so well; we could see the stars through the window plainer and
plainer as the fire went down, and we could hear the noise of the sea.

"Do you remember in the old myth of Demeter and Persephone," Kate asked
me, "where Demeter takes care of the child and gives it ambrosia and
hides it in fire, because she loves it and wishes to make it immortal,
and to give it eternal youth; and then the mother finds it out and cries
in terror to hinder her, and the goddess angrily throws the child down
and rushes away? And he had to share the common destiny of mankind,
though he always had some wonderful inscrutable grace and wisdom,
because a goddess had loved him and held him in her arms. I always
thought that part of the story beautiful where Demeter throws off her
disguise and is no longer an old woman, and the great house is filled
with brightness like lightning, and she rushes out through the halls
with her yellow hair waving over her shoulders, and the people would
give anything to bring her back again, and to undo their mistake. I knew
it almost all by heart once," said Kate, "and I am always finding a new
meaning in it. I was just thinking that it may be that we all have given
to us more or less of another nature, as the child had whom Demeter
wished to make like the gods. I bel