When Adrian shut the door behind him the late November day was drawing to its close, and between the rifts in the sullen snow clouds now and again an arrow from the westering sun struck upon the tall, skeleton-like sails of the mill, through which the wind rushed with a screaming noise.  Adrian had intended to walk on the marsh, but finding it too sodden, he crossed the western dyke by means of a board laid from bank to bank, and struck into the sand-dunes beyond.  Even in the summer, when the air was still and flowers bloomed and larks sang, these dunes were fantastic and almost unnatural in appearance, with their deep, wind-scooped hollows of pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses.  But now, beneath the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in the world could have been more lonesome or more desolate, for never a sign of man was to be seen upon them and save for a solitary curlew, whose sad note reached Adrian’s ears as it beat up wind from the sea, even the beasts and birds that dwelt there had hidden themselves away.  Only the voices of Nature remained in all their majesty, the drear screams and moan of the rushing wind, and above it, now low and now voluminous as the gale veered, the deep and constant roar of the ocean.

Adrian reached the highest crest of the ridge, whence the sea, hidden hitherto, became suddenly visible, a vast, slate-coloured expanse, twisted here and there into heaps, hollowed here and there into valleys, and broken everywhere with angry lines and areas of white.  In such trouble, for, after its own fashion, his heart was troubled, some temperaments might have found a kind of consolation in this sight, for while we witness them, at any rate, the throes and moods of Nature in their greatness declare a mastery of our senses, and stun or hush to silence the petty turmoil of our souls.  This, at least, is so with those who have eyes to read the lesson written on Nature’s face, and ears to hear the message which day by day she delivers with her lips; gifts given only to such as hold the cypher-key of imagination, and pray for grace to use it.

In Adrian’s case, however, the weirdness of the sand-hills and the grandeur of the seascape with the bitter wind that blew between and the solitude which brooded over all, served only to exasperate nerves that already were strained well nigh to breaking.

Why had his father brought him to this hideous swamp bordered by a sailless sea?  To save their lives from the fury of the mob?  This he understood, but there was more in it than that, some plot which he did not understand, and which the ruffian, Hague Simon, and that she-fiend, his companion, had gone away to execute.  Meanwhile he must sit here day after day playing cards with the wretch Ramiro, whom, for no fault of his own, God had chosen out to be his parent.  By the way, why was the man so fond of playing cards?  And what was the meaning of all that nonsense about notes of hand?  Yes, here he must sit, and for company he had the sense of his unalterable shame, the memory of his mother’s face as she spurned and rejected him, the vision of the woman whom he loved and had lost, and—­the ghost of Dirk van Goorl.