The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and hostile approaching the house.
So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into the warm straw of his kennel.
Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house.
The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one.
The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud anchored to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings. It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a bugle in the mind.
Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived fresh and happy at the Old House.
He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In Essex the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon anticipation and the morning.
In the kitchen Phœbe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of the hour.
The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready for the four-wheel dogcart.
"Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress will have a chance to get right. . . . Master said good-bye to Mistress last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche.