voice muttered:

"Before two years are sped I shall die a cruel death!"

I sprang forward with a warning hand up. That is why Catherine did not
scream. She was going to do that--I saw it plainly. Then I whispered her
to slip out of the place, and say nothing of what had happened. I said
Joan was asleep--asleep and dreaming. Catherine whispered back, and said:

"Oh, I am so grateful that it is only a dream! It sounded like prophecy."
And she was gone.

Like prophecy! I knew it was prophecy; and I sat down crying, as knowing
we should lose her. Soon she started, shivering slightly, and came to
herself, and looked around and saw me crying there, and jumped out of her
chair and ran to me all in a whirl of sympathy and compassion, and put
her hand on my head, and said:

"My poor boy! What is it? Look up and tell me."

I had to tell her a lie; I grieved to do it, but there was no other way.
I picked up an old letter from my table, written by Heaven knows who,
about some matter Heaven knows what, and told her I had just gotten it
from Pere Fronte, and that in it it said the children's Fairy Tree had
been chopped down by some miscreant or other, and-- I got no further. She
snatched the letter from my hand and searched it up and down and all
over, turning it this way and that, and sobbing great sobs, and the tears
flowing down her cheeks, and ejaculating all the time, "Oh, cruel, cruel!
how could any be so heartless? Ah, poor Arbre Fee de Bourlemont gone--and
we children loved it so! Show me the place where it says it!"