Between eight and nine we had some tea.  The wind had lulled a little from its hurricane force; the rain had stopped.

“It had all been blown to Canada, by this time,” Harry Goldthwaite said.  “That rain never stopped anywhere short, except at the walls and windows.”

True enough, next morning, when we went out, the grass was actually dry.

It was nearly ten when Stephen went to the south window and put his hands up each side of his face against the glass, and cried out that there was a lantern coming over from grandfather’s.  Then we all went and looked.

It came slowly; once or twice it stopped; and once it moved down hill at right angles quite a long way.  “That is where the trees are down,” we said.  But presently it took an unobstructed diagonal, and came steadily on to the long piazza steps, and up to the side door that opened upon the little passage to the dining-room.

We thought it was father, of course, and we all hurried to the door to let him in, and at the same time to make it nearly impossible that he should enter at all.  But it was Grandfather Holabird’s man, Robert.

“The old gentleman has been taken bad,” he said.  “Mr. Stephen wants to know if you’re all comfortable, and he won’t come till Mr. Holabird’s better.  I’ve got to go to the town for the doctor.”

“On foot, Robert?”

“Sure.  There’s no other way.  I take it there’s many a good winter’s firing of wood down across the road atwixt here and there.  There ain’t much knowing where you can get along.”

“But what is it?”

“We mustn’t keep him,” urged Barbara.

“No, I ain’t goin’ to be kep’.  ’T won’t do.  I donno what it is.  It’s a kind of a turn.  He’s comin’ partly out of it; but it’s bad.  He had a kind of a warnin’ once before.  It’s his head.  They’re afraid it’s appalectic, or paralettic, or sunthin’.”

Robert looked very sober.  He quite passed by the wonder of the gale, that another time would have stirred him to most lively speech.  Robert “thought a good deal,” as he expressed it, of Grandfather Holabird.

Harry Goldthwaite came through the brown room with his hat in his hand.  How he ever found it we could not tell.

“I’ll go with him,” he said.  “You won’t be afraid now, will you, Barbara?  I’m very sorry about Mr. Holabird.”

He shook hands with Barbara,—­it chanced that she stood nearest,—­bade us all good night, and went away.  We turned back silently into the brown room.

We were all quite hushed from our late excitement.  What strange things were happening to-night!

All in a moment something so solemn and important was put into our minds.  An event that,—­never talked about, and thought of as little, I suppose, as such a one ever was in any family like ours,—­had yet always loomed vaguely afar, as what should come some time, and would bring changes when it came, was suddenly impending.