Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken as to the cause and mode of his desertion:  oppressed like every one else with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep, leaning against the organ.  The thunder only waked him sufficiently to render him capable of slipping from the stool on which he had lazily seated himself as he worked the lever of the bellows, and stretching himself at full length upon the floor; while the coolness that by degrees filled the air as the rain kept pouring, made his sleep sweeter and deeper.  He lay and snored till midnight.

A bell rang in the marquis’s chamber.

It was one of his lordship’s smaller economic maxims that in every house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance, the master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from each other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be arranged for, in order that, to use his own figure, he might spread his skirts the wider over the place, and chiefly the part occupied by his own family and immediate attendants—­thereby to give himself, without paying more attention to such matters than he could afford, a better chance of coming upon the trace of anything that happened to be going amiss.  ‘For,’ he said, ’let a man have ever so many responsible persons about him, the final responsibility of his affairs yet returns upon himself.’  Hence, while his bedroom was close to the main entrance, that is the gate to the stone court, the room he chose for retirement and study was over the western gate, that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole side of the double quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther from the library, which was on the other side of the main entrance—­whence, notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch any book he wanted.  It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in his study, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell which Caspar had hung in his bedchamber.  He was, however, at the moment, looking from a window which commanded the very spot—­namely, the mouth of the archway—­towards which the bell would have drawn his attention.

The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon was clouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any part of the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the chapel and the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall stood at right angles to both.

Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by the roar of water.  It sounded as if a captive river had broken loose, and grown suddenly frantic with freedom.  The marquis could not help starting violently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken.  The same instant, ere there was time for a single conjecture, a torrent, visible by the light of its foam, shot from the archway, hurled itself against the chapel door, and vanished.  Sad and startled as he was, lord Worcester, requiring no explanation of the phenomenon now that it was completed, laughed aloud and hurried from the room.