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