are three vessels come into Boston harbor that have been out whaling and sealing in the South Seas for three or four years, and your son Matthew’s name is down on the list of the crew.’  ‘I tell ye,’ says gran’ther, ’I took that paper, and I got on my horse and put for home, and your grandmother she hailed me, and she said, “You’ve heard, haven’t you?” before I told her a word.’

“Gran’ther he got his breakfast and started right off for Boston, and got there early the second day, and went right down on the wharves.  Somebody lent him a boat, and he went out to where there were two sealers laying off riding at anchor, and he asked a sailor if Matthew was aboard.  ‘Ay, ay,’ says the sailor, ‘he’s down below.’  And he sung out for him, and when he come up out of the hold his hair was long, down over his shoulders like a horse’s mane, just as his mother saw it in the dream.  Gran’ther he didn’t know what to say,—­it scared him,—­and he asked how it happened; and father told how they’d been off sealing in the South Seas, and he and another man had lived alone on an island for months, and the whole crew had grown wild in their ways of living, being off so long, and for one thing had gone without caps and let their hair grow.  The rest of the men had been ashore and got fixed up smart, but he had been busy, and had put it off till that morning; he was just going ashore then.  Father was all struck up when he heard about the dream, and said his mind had been dwellin’ on his mother and going home, and 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.