A flash of lighting lit up the room with a fitful gleam, and a loud roll of thunder shook the old house to its very foundations. The storm, as frequently happens in those regions, had been travelling in a kind of circle, and was now returning in all its former fury.
“Will it wake her? She has had enough scare for one night,” he thought, uneasily glancing towards her. But no; thoroughly wearied out, Ethel never moved as the rickety casements rattled to the fierce gusts which howled round the building, and Claverton felt relieved. Presently he got up and went to the window. All was pitch dark outside, but every now and then the sky would be ablaze with a sudden flash—blue, plum-coloured, and gold, in its vivid incandescence—the hill tops stood out as if cut in steel against the misty background, while beneath yawned the intersecting rifts of black, chasm-like kloofs, every leaf and twig wet and shining, as clearly definable as at noonday. A panorama of weirdness and desolation. Then pitchy blackness and the long heavy roll of the storm king’s artillery. Claverton resumed his seat, and the thunder crashed and roared outside, the lightning played in vivid gleams, and the rain fell in torrents with a noise like the rush of many waters; but within, silence, only broken by the soft, regular breathing of the sleeper, and the plash of a big drop on the floor, for the tattered thatch was not so watertight as might be wished. And the night wore on. The fire burnt low, leaving the angles of the ghostly old room in shadowy darkness, while now and again a scratching noise might be heard as some creeping thing made its way through the thatch or along the beams. The storm lulled, and then passed, and, save for the murmur of falling rain, perfect silence prevailed outside, and still the chilled watcher sat there, upright and motionless. Then he fell into a doze. The dismal bark of a jackal was now and again borne from the lonely bush; but not a sound escaped him as he sat there, till at last the first faint shiver of dawn thrilled upon the hushened air; a red glow in the east, then a blood-coloured streak on the few light clouds which,—but for the soaked earth, were the sole traces of a night of fierce tempestuousness.
Claverton rose and went out softly, so as not to arouse his companion, to where he had tied up the horses. Those long-suffering animals pricked up their ears and whinnied at his approach, and, except that one of them had got its leg over the reim, were just as they had been left the night before. Then he went back to awaken Ethel. A smile was upon her lips, and as he stood over her a gleam of sunlight shot in at the open door and played upon the beautiful face. He lingered a few moments, for he could hardly bring himself to arouse her; but time was flying, the sun was up, and they must be going. So he said, quietly but distinctly: “Time to be off, Ethel.”
The girl started slightly, opened her eyes, then started again in bewilderment. He watched her with an amused expression.
“Where am I?” she exclaimed, sitting upright and looking round. “Oh, I remember. I thought it was all a dream.”
“Well, we must be getting home. I’m just going to take the horses down into the kloof and give them a drink, and then we’ll make tracks.”
He went out, and Ethel got up and looked around. “What a selfish little wretch I am!” she thought, as her eyes rested on the relics of the night’s doings, the dying embers of the fire, beside which lay the empty pocket-flask, and the bit of paper and string whence the opportune sandwich had been extracted, and then on the cloak which she had just thrown off. “I took everything from him, and left him to sit there all night, cold and wet and hungry. I wish it had to come all over again, that I might sit out in the rain and the thunder and lightning all night. That’s what I’d do, I swear I would,” she ended, vehemently.
A trampling of hoofs outside showed that the object of her meditations was returning.
“Now then, I’ll just put the saddles on and we shall get home in nice time for breakfast,” he said; “but, first of all, we’ll see how our friend of last night got in.”
“What, did that actually happen? I thought I dreamt it.”