intolerable pain. Walter's death had inflicted on her heart a terrible wound. But it had been a clean wound and had healed slowly, as such wounds do, though the scar must remain forever. But the torture of Jem’s disappearance was another thing: there was a poison in it that kept it from healing. The alternations of hope and despair, the endless watching each day for the letter that never came—that might never come—the newspaper tales of ill-usage of prisoners—the bitter wonder as to Jem’s wound—all were increasingly hard to bear.
Gertrude Oliver turned her head. There was an odd brilliancy in her eyes.
“Rilla, I’ve had another dream.”
“Oh, no—no,” cried Rilla, shrinking. Miss Oliver’s dreams had always foretold coming disaster.
“Rilla, it was a good dream. Listen—I dreamed just as I did four years ago, that I stood on the veranda steps and looked down the Glen. And it was still covered by waves that lapped about my feet. But as I looked the waves began to ebb—and they ebbed as swiftly as, four years ago, they rolled in—ebbed out and out, to the gulf; and the Glen lay before me, beautiful and green, with a rainbow spanning Rainbow Valley—a rainbow of such splendid colour that it dazzled me—and I woke. Rilla—Rilla Blythe—the tide has turned.”
“I wish I could believe it,” sighed Rilla.
“‘Sooth was my prophecy of fear
Believe it when it augurs cheer,’”
quoted Gertrude, almost gaily. “I tell you I have no doubt.”
