A gun went off in the edge of the bushes close by.

The flash of fire from its muzzle leaped at the stranger.

The horses reared and plunged and mine threw me in a clump of small poppies by the roadside and dashed down the hill.
All this had broken into the peace of a summer evening on a lonely road and the time in which it had happened could be measured, probably, by ten ticks of the watch.
My fall on the stony siding had stunned me and I lay for three or four seconds, as nearly as I can estimate it, in a strange and peaceful dream.

Why did I dream of Amos Grimshaw coming to visit me, again, and why, above all, should it have seemed to me that enough things were said and done in that little flash of a dream to fill a whole day--enough of talk and play and going and coming, the whole ending with a talk on the haymow.

Again and again I have wondered about that dream.