Alive with curiosity he sprang out of bed, groped his way across to the window and, putting up the blind, leaned out.

A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves broke in soft flash and sparkle.  Its light was not strong enough to quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky.  Tom could distinguish the black mass of the great ilex trees on the right.  Could see the whole extent of the lawn, the two sentinel cannon and pyramid of ammunition set on the terrace along the top of the sea-wall.  And nothing moved there, nothing whatever.  The outstretch of turf was vacant, empty; bare—­so Tom told himself—­as the back of his own hand.  The sounds seemed to have ceased now that sight denied them visible cause of existence; and he began to wonder whether his hearing had not played him false, whether the whole thing was not pure fancy, a delusion born of agitated dreams.

He pushed the sash up as far as it would go and leaned further out of the window.  The luscious scent of a late flowering species of lonercera, trained against the house wall, saluted his nostrils, along with a fetid-sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven.  Away in the village a dog yelped, and out on the salt-marshes water-fowl gave faint whistling cries.  Then all settled down into stillness, save for the just audible chuckle and suck of the river as the stream met the inflowing tide.

The stillness pleased him.  For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship’s side.—­All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward.  Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning moon?  He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either.  It might not be actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain foulness.  He yawned, drew back into the room, and straightening himself up, stretched his hands above his head.  He would get into bed again.  He was dog-tired—­yes, most distinctly bed!

Then he stopped short, listening, hastily knelt down by the window and again leaned out.  For once more he heard horses coming up from the shore, across the garden, into and through the house, hustling and trampling one another as they shied away from the whip.—­There were laggards too—­one stumbled, rolled over in the sand, got on its feet after a nasty struggle, and tottered onward dead lame.  Another fell in its tracks and lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.

The sounds were so descriptive, so explicit and the impression produced on Tom Verity’s mind so vivid that, carried away by indignation, he found himself saying out loud: 

“Curse them, the brutes, the cowardly brutes, mishandling their cattle like that!  They”—­

And he stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though he had heard so convincingly much.  A shiver ran down his spine and he broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a shadow,—­let alone anything material—­had breasted the sea-wall, passed over the smooth level turf, or entered—­how should it?—­the house.