ough the dusty window
and fell on the harness-room door, which stood slightly ajar. Mary Sands
ran to the door and peeped in. There, in the one chair tilted back, his
feet on the stove, his head against the farther wall, sat Calvin Parks,
sound asleep.

"Oh! you blessed creatur'!" cried Mary under her breath. She stood
looking at him, taking swift note of his appearance.

"He's sick!" she said; "or he's been through the wars somehow. He looks
completely tuckered out. There! he is not fit to be round alone, and
that's the livin' truth. Oh dear! 'tis cold as a stone here; he'll get
his death. Calvin! Mr. Parks! Wake up, won't you? Wake up!"

Now Calvin Parks had been dreaming, a thing that seldom occurred in the
simple organism of his brain. He dreamed that he was on a lonely road,
with high, rocky banks on either side; and that he was pursued by two
black hooded snakes with glittering eyes, that reared and hissed on
either side of him, and darted at him as he sped along. He tried to cry
out, but found no voice. As he panted on in terror and anguish, thinking
every moment to feel the venomed fangs in his flesh, suddenly a bird
came flying down, a blue bird with a white breast, and took the evil
creatures one after the other and flung them far from his path. And as
he looked, still panting and breathless, the bird turned into Mary Sands
in her blue dress and white apron, and she cried--"Wake up, Calvin
Parks! wake up!"

He opened his eyes, dim and bewildered with sleep. The vision was still
before him, the trim blue and white figure, the pretty brown hair, the
hazel eyes full of anxious tenderness. Still bewildered, still only half
awake, he opened his arms and gathered the little figure into them. "My
woman!" he said. "My woman, before God and while I live."

"Oh! yes, Calvin!" said Mary Sands; and she hid her head on his broad
breast and sobbed, a little happy sob.

So they stood for a moment, heaven as near to their middle-aged hearts
as to any boy and girl lovers under the sun; then suddenly Calvin put
her from him with a quick movement, and stepped back.

"I forgot!" he cried. "Mary, I forgot. I--I spoke too soon."

"Too soon!" echoed Mary Sands.

"I've no right to you yet!" he cried. "I thought I had; I forgot last
night. Mary, I won't ask for you till I have a right to. Yesterday I had
the right, or thought I had; to-day I haven't. You--you'd better forget
what I said--no! don't forget one word of it, but-