Then you started to cry.”

“I did!” said Aunt Polly. “Sereny Harper is going to hear about this before I’m an hour older. Go on, Tom!”

“Well, then Mrs. Harper started to cry. She said Joe wasn’t bad either. She wished she hadn’t whipped him for taking the cream when she was the one who threw it out.”

“Tom!” cried Aunt Polly. “You were dreaming like a prophet. Land alive! Go on, Tom!”

So Tom told his aunt everything he had heard from under the bed that night. He didn’t leave out a thing! Aunt Polly was overcome with awe.

“I think you prayed for me then,” said Tom, nearing the end. “I was so sorry, I wrote a note on a piece of bark. I wrote, ‘We’re not dead—we are only off being pirates.’ I put the bark on your table and kissed you.”

“Did you, Tom, did you?” asked Aunt Polly. “I know it’s only a dream, but I can forgive you everything now!”

The old woman hugged Tom tightly.

When Tom was at school, Aunt Polly went to visit Mrs. Harper. She wanted to tell her Tom’s dream.

At lunch Tom came home to a very angry aunt.

“I should skin you alive,” she said. “I ran over to Sereny Harper’s like an old softy. I told her your amazing dream. She told me that Joe said you were here that night. It wasn’t a dream at all!

“You let me make a fool of myself. What kind of boy are you?” Aunt Polly asked.

Tom was sorry for playing this joke on his aunt. It was mean. He hung his head and apologized.

“Why did you come over that night?” asked Aunt Polly. “Did you come to laugh at our troubles?”

“Oh, no, Auntie, honest,” said Tom earnestly. “I came to tell you we were fine and not to worry. I even wrote you a note. But then I got the idea about the funeral.

“I put the note back into my pocket and kissed you good night. Now I wish I had woken you up.”

The hard lines in his aunt’s face softened. She looked at her nephew tenderly.

“Did you kiss me, Tom?”

“Why, yes, I did.”

After Tom went back to school, Aunt Polly picked up his jacket. She wanted to look in the pocket. She wondered if the note was actually there. Or if this was just another one of Tom’s stories.

Aunt Polly couldn’t decide what to do.