“I’m thinking, sir,” John remarked, when I had finished, “that it’d be as well for Foulds and I to have a scour round and see if we can’t find him, or he’ll be doing someone a mischief.”
“If you are not very busy I wish you would,” I said. “I don’t feel quite easy at the thought of his wandering about round here. If you do find him, lock him up and send word to the police-station at Mellborough.”
After breakfast that morning my mother made a request which startled me almost as much it delighted me.
“I am going to walk over to the monastery, Philip,” she said quietly. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course I will, mother,” I answered promptly. “Nothing could give me greater pleasure. When will you start?”
“I shall be ready in half an hour,” she said, with a faint smile, as though she were pleased at my ready acquiescence. Then she left the room to get ready.
In about the time she had mentioned she came into the garden to me and we started on our walk. It was a very uneventful one, but I don’t think that I shall ever forget it. My mother seemed, after her brief relapse into comparative kindness, to have become more inaccessible than ever; and she walked along by my side, with downcast eyes and a nervous, thoughtful expression on her pale face.
I, too, felt somewhat depressed at starting, but soon the fresh, pure air, becoming stronger and stronger as we left the road and followed the footpath by Beacon Hill, had its invariable effect upon my spirits. All perplexing thoughts and forebodings of trouble passed away from me like magic, and my heart beat and the blood flowed through my veins with all the impetuous ardour of sanguine youth.
At the top of the hill we paused, I to look round upon my favourite scene, my mother to rest for a moment. Then we saw how great had been the storm of the night before.
Here and there were the bare trunks of trees and many a cattle-shed and barn stood roofless. The storm seemed to have worked havoc everywhere, save where, on the summit of its wooded hill, Ravenor Castle, with its great range of mighty battlements, its vast towers, and grey walls of invincible thickness, frowned down upon the country at its feet. Looking across at it, it seemed to me that the place had never seemed so imposing as then.