Above the crying of the storm there came a tremendous rat-tat on the knocker of the hall door.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE MESSENGER

My grandfather made a step or two towards the door, but my grandmother, who seemed distraught with terror, would not let him go, but clung to him the closer.  Dido had gone to the door of the room and was barking to get out.  She was running up and down in a frenzy of impatience.  The tremendous knocking still went on above the noise of the wind.

“It is absurd,” I cried, trying to make my grandmother hear; “did any one ever know the death-coach to come knocking at the door?”

But she was too terrified to hear me.  So I let her be, and, snatching one of the candles from the table, I went out into the hall.  I knew quite well that I should not be able to draw back the heavy bolts, but, while I looked at them helplessly, half-deafened by the incessant knocking of the great iron knocker on the oak door, old Neil came down the stairs muttering, as was his way.

“First I thought it was a ghost,” he said, “but no ghost ever knocked like that.  God send he brings good news, whoever he is!  Glory be to God, he’s in a divil of a hurry to get in.”

I held my candle for him to see, and the knocking ceased while he undid the bolts.  Dido was whining and running up and down impeding him, and I heard him say that he’d kick her if it wasn’t that she was already afflicted with blindness, the creature, and was Master Luke’s dog.  Now that the silence had come we heard the rain driven in torrents against the fanlight above the hall door.

At the moment the bolt fell I glanced behind me.  My grandfather and grandmother had come out into the hall:  his arm was about her with a protecting tenderness.  There was a huddle of women-servants in all sorts of undress, peeping from the back hall.  In front of them, pushing them back, was Maureen, her shoulders covered with a shawl upon which her grey hair fell loosely.

The door burst open as soon as the bolt fell, and there was a rush of wind and rain, and my candle went out.  I saw a tall figure against the stormy sky where the moon looked through the fast-driven clouds.

“God save us, what a night!” the new-comer said, entering and closing the door behind him; and it took all his strength to close it.

“Bring lights, bring lights,” I cried; and ran to my grandfather to whisper to him to take my grandmother back into the room lest the sudden joy should be too much for her.  For I had seen old Dido leap on to the stranger with a frantic joy, licking his face and hands; or I had known that it was so without seeing it, for the hall was in darkness.

Some one brought a light, and I saw old Maureen leap at the tall stranger as Dido had done and fling her arms about him, crying out for her Ladyship, where was her Ladyship, for Master Luke had come home.