Brock's hand on the shaggy head. The two swung steadily toward her,
Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they
were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as
she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above
the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so
sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, like pain.

"Mother, I'm coming to take Hughie's hand--to take Hughie's hand," he
repeated.

And with that Mavourneen's great cry rose above his voice. And suddenly
she was awake. Somewhere outside the house, yet near, the dog was
loudly, joyfully crying. Out of the deep stillness of the night burst
the sound of the joyful crying.

The woman shot from her bed and ran barefooted, her heart beating madly,
into the darkness of the hall to the landing on the stairway. Something
halted her. There was a broad, uncurtained pane of glass in the front
door of the house. From the landing one might look down the stone steps
outside and see clearly in the bright moonlight as far as the beginning
of the rose archway. As she stood gasping, from beneath the flowers
Brock stepped into the moonlight and began, unhurried, buoyant, as she
had but now seen him in her dream, to mount the steps. Mavourneen
pressed at his side, and his hand was on the dog's head. As he came, he
lifted his face to his mother with the accustomed, every-day smile which
she knew, as if he were coming home, as he had come home on many a
moonlit evening from a dance in town to talk the day over with her. As
she stared, standing in the dark on the landing, her pulse racing, yet
still with the stillness of infinity, an arm came around her, a hand
gripped her shoulder, and young Hugh's voice spoke.