Not such power of wind has blown for many a winter night.  Chimneys topple in the streets, and people hold to posts and corners, and to one another, to keep themselves upon their feet.  The violent rushes abate not, but increase in frequency and fury until at midnight, when the streets are empty, the storm goes thundering along them, rattling at all the latches, and tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the people to get up and fly with it, rather than have the roofs brought down upon their brains.

Still, the red light burns steadily.  Nothing is steady but the red light.

All through the night the wind blows, and abates not.  But early in the morning, when there is barely enough light in the east to dim the stars, it begins to lull.  From that time, with occasional wild charges, like a wounded monster dying, it drops and sinks; and at full daylight it is dead.

It is then seen that the hands of the Cathedral clock are torn off; that lead from the roof has been stripped away, rolled up, and blown into the Close; and that some stones have been displaced upon the summit of the great tower.  Christmas morning though it be, it is necessary to send up workmen, to ascertain the extent of the damage done.  These, led by Durdles, go aloft; while Mr. Tope and a crowd of early idlers gather down in Minor Canon Corner, shading their eyes and watching for their appearance up there.

This cluster is suddenly broken and put aside by the hands of Mr. Jasper; all the gazing eyes are brought down to the earth by his loudly inquiring of Mr. Crisparkle, at an open window: 

‘Where is my nephew?’

‘He has not been here.  Is he not with you?’

’No.  He went down to the river last night, with Mr. Neville, to look at the storm, and has not been back.  Call Mr. Neville!’

‘He left this morning, early.’

‘Left this morning early?  Let me in! let me in!’

There is no more looking up at the tower, now.  All the assembled eyes are turned on Mr. Jasper, white, half-dressed, panting, and clinging to the rail before the Minor Canon’s house.

CHAPTER XV—­IMPEACHED

Neville Landless had started so early and walked at so good a pace, that when the church-bells began to ring in Cloisterham for morning service, he was eight miles away.  As he wanted his breakfast by that time, having set forth on a crust of bread, he stopped at the next roadside tavern to refresh.

Visitors in want of breakfast—­unless they were horses or cattle, for which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way of water-trough and hay—­were so unusual at the sign of The Tilted Wagon, that it took a long time to get the wagon into the track of tea and toast and bacon.  Neville in the interval, sitting in a sanded parlour, wondering in how long a time after he had gone, the sneezy fire of damp fagots would begin to make somebody else warm.