Most of his dreams, which now seemed to be coming with greater frequency, he told to the major.

One day he said, “I was trying to tell Saffy a dream I had while you were resting. And when I told her she said, ‘But it’s all nonsense, you know, Mark! It’s only a dream!’—What do you think, majie?”

“Was it a dream, Mark?” asked the major.

“Yes, it was a dream, but do you think a dream is nothing at all? I think if it is a good dream, it must be God’s. For you know every good thing is from God. He made the thing that dreams and the things that set it dreaming, so he must be the master of dreams—at least when he pleases. Do you know, majie, I used to think he came and talked to me in the window-seat when I was a child! What if he really did, and I should be going to be made sure that he did—up there, I mean, you know—I don’t know where, but it’s where Jesus went when he went back to his papa! Oh, how happy Jesus must have been when he got back to his papa!”

Here he began to cough and could talk no more for the present.

A great silent change had been passing in the major, for the child’s and the soldier’s souls had gotten nearer to each other than until that time any two other souls in the house had been able to. Mark was not only an altogether new influence on him, but he had helped to stir up and bring alive in him a thousand influences besides. Those were not merely of things hitherto dormant in him, but memories of unconscious memories—words of his mother, a certain Sunday evening with her, her last blessing on his careless head, the verse of a well-known hymn she repeated as she was dying, old scraps of things she had taught him. Dying little Mark gave life to these and many other things. The major had never properly been a child but now lived his childhood over again with Mark in a better fashion.

“I have had such a curious, such a beautiful dream, majie,” he said, waking up in the middle of one night. The major was sitting up with him—he was never left alone now.

“What was it, Markie?” asked the major.

“I should like Corney to hear it,” returned Mark.

“I will call him and you can tell us both together.”

“Oh, I don’t think we should wake Corney up. He would not like that! He must hear it sometime—but it must be at the right time, otherwise he would laugh at it and I could not bear that. You know Corney always laughs without thinking first whether the thing was made for laughing at.”