intelligence to state the
result. Let me offer you my place in the chaise. And let Francis Raven
tell his terrible story in his own words.

THE SECOND NARRATIVE

THE HOSTLER'S STORY.--TOLD BY HIMSELF

IV

It is now ten years ago since I got my first warning of the great trouble
of my life in the Vision of a Dream.

I shall be better able to tell you about it if you will please suppose
yourselves to be drinking tea along with us in our little cottage in
Cambridgeshire, ten years since.

The time was the close of day, and there were three of us at the table,
namely, my mother, myself, and my mother's sister, Mrs. Chance. These two
were Scotchwomen by birth, and both were widows. There was no other
resemblance between them that I can call to mind. My mother had lived all
her life in England, and had no more of the Scotch brogue on her tongue
than I have. My aunt Chance had never been out of Scotland until she came
to keep house with my mother after her husband's death. And when _she_
opened her lips you heard broad Scotch, I can tell you, if you ever heard
it yet!

As it fell out, there was a matter of some consequence in debate among us
that evening. It was this: whether I should do well or not to take a long
journey on foot the next morning.

Now the next morning happened to be the day before my birthday; and the
purpose of the journey was to offer myself for a situation as groom at a
great house in the neighboring county to ours. The place was reported as
likely to fall vacant in about three weeks' time. I was as well fitted to
fill it as any other man. In the prosperous days of our family, my father
had been manager of a training stable, and he had kept me employed among
the horses from my boyhood upward. Please to excuse my troubling you with
these small matters. They all fit into my story farther on, as you will
soon find out. My poor mother was dead against my leaving home on the
morrow.

"You can never walk all the way there and all the way back again by
to-morrow night," she says. "The end of it will be that you will sleep
away from home on your birthday. You have never done that yet, Francis,
since your father's death, I don't like your doing it now. Wait a day
longer, my son--only one day."

For my own part, I was weary of being idle, and I couldn't abide the
notion of delay. Even one day might make all the difference. Some other
man might take time by the forelock, and get the place