He sat upon the edge of the pit wondering who there was that he might trust.  Not his own gardener.  To begin with he would never come near the place at night, and besides such people talk.  The Squire?  No, he could not rouse him at this hour, and also, for obvious reasons, they had not met lately.  Ah, he had it.  George was the man!  To begin with he could be relied upon to hold his tongue.  The episode of the production of the real Mrs. Quest had taught him that George was a person of no common powers.  He could think and he could act also.

Harold threw on his coat, extinguished the large stable lantern, and passing out, locked the door of the summer-house and started down the mount at a trot.  The wind had risen steadily during his hours of work, and was now blowing a furious gale.  It was about a quarter to four in the morning and the stars shone brightly in the hard clean-blown sky.  By their light and that of the waning moon he struggled on in the teeth of the raging tempest.  As he passed under one of the oaks he heard a mighty crack overhead, and guessing what it was ran like a hare.  He was none too soon.  A circular gust of more than usual fierceness had twisted the top right out of the great tree, and down it came upon the turf with a rending crashing sound that made his blood turn cold.  After this escape he avoided the neighbourhood of the groaning trees.

George lived in a neat little farmhouse about a quarter of a mile away.  There was a shot cut to it across the fields, and this he took, breathlessly fighting his way against the gale, which roared and howled in its splendid might as it swept across the ocean from its birthplace in the distances of air.  Even the stiff hawthorn fences bowed before its breath, and the tall poplars on the skyline bent like a rod beneath the first rush of a salmon.

Excited as he was, the immensity and grandeur of the sight and sounds struck upon him with a strange force.  Never before had he felt so far apart from man and so near to that dread Spirit round Whose feet thousands of rolling worlds rush on, at Whose word they are, endure, and are not.

He struggled forward until at last he reached the house.  It was quite silent, but in one of the windows a light was burning.  No doubt its occupants found it impossible to sleep in that wild gale.  The next thing to consider was how to make himself heard.  To knock at the door would be useless in that turmoil.  There was only one thing to be done —­throw stones at the window.  He found a good-sized pebble, and standing underneath, threw it with such goodwill that it went right through the glass.  It lit, as he afterwards heard, full upon the sleeping Mrs. George’s nose, and nearly frightened that good woman, whose nerves were already shaken by the gale, into a fit.  Next minute a red nightcap appeared at the window.

“George!” roared the Colonel, in a lull of the gale.

“Who’s there?” came the faint answer.