found myself in your arms. Oh! it was a strange and a fearful
dream!"

"And it may not be all a dream, Fanny," said Mrs. Markland, in a
very impressive voice.

"Not all a dream, mother!" Fanny seemed startled at the words.

"No, dear. Dreams are often merely fantastic. But there come visions
in sleep, sometimes, that are permitted as warnings, and truly
represent things existing in real life."

"I do not understand you, mother."

"There is in the human mind a quality represented by the serpent,
and also a quality represented by the dove. When our Saviour said of
Herod, 'Go tell that fox,' he meant to designate the man as having
the quality of a fox."

"But how does this apply to dreams?" asked Fanny.

"He who sends his angels to watch over and protect us in sleep, may
permit them to bring before us, in dreaming images, the embodied
form of some predominating quality in those whose association may do
us harm. The low, subtle selfishness of the sensual principle will
then take its true form of a wily serpent."

Fanny caught her breath once or twice, as these words fell upon her
ears, and then said, in a deprecating voice--