and now , lying wakeful in her bed and listening to her husband 's breathing and the wind outside ( miraculously , they 'd had only another flurry that afternoon ; still no heavy snow ) , she let her mind turn fully to her lovely , troubling son , born with a caul over his face , a simple tissue of membrane that doctors saw perhaps once in every seven hundred births , a tissue that the old wives ' tales said betokened the second sight .