this time in relation to the
mysterious dream-warning of nearly eight years before. By a last
desperate effort, he summoned self-possession enough to help his mother
out of the house--so quietly that the "Dream-woman" (he thought of her
by that name now) did not hear them departing from the kitchen.

"Don't go back, Isaac--don't go back!" implored Mrs. Scatchard, as he
turned to go away, after seeing her safely seated again in her own room.

"I must get the knife," he answered, under his breath. His mother tried
to stop him again, but he hurried out without another word.

On his return he found that his wife had discovered their secret
departure from the house. She had been drinking, and was in a fury of
passion. The dinner in the kitchen was flung under the grate; the cloth
was off the parlor table. Where was the knife?

Unwisely, he asked for it. She was only too glad of the opportunity of
irritating him which the request afforded her. "He wanted the knife, did
he? Could he give her a reason why? No! Then he should not have it--not
if he went down on his knees to ask for it." Further recriminations
elicited the fact that she had bought it a bargain, and that she
considered it her own especial property. Isaac saw the uselessness of
attempting to get the knife by fair means, and determined to search for
it, later in the day, in secret. The search was unsuccessful. Night came
on, and he left the house to walk about the streets. He was afraid now
to sleep in the same room with her.

Three weeks passed. Still sullenly enraged with him, she would not give
up the knife; and still that fear of sleeping in the same room with her
possessed him. He walked about at night, or dozed in the parlor, or sat
watching by his mother's bedside. Before the expiration of the first
week in the new month his mother died. It wanted then but ten days of
her son's birthday. She had longed to live till that anniversary.
Isaac was present at her death, and her last words in this world were
addressed to him:

"Don't go back, my son, don't go back!" He was obliged to go back, if
it were only to watch his wife. Exasperated to the last degree by his
distrust of her, she had revengefully sought to add a sting to his
grief, during the last days of his mother's illness, by declaring that
she would assert her right to attend the funeral. In spite of any thing
he could do or say, she held with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on
the day appointed