"Any news, sir?" she asked.
"No; no news," I said. I had been about to ask her the same question.
V
I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a picture of Ellen Mary before my eyes, and I could still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of the rain on the beech leaves.
In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I heard a long, wailing cry out on the Common. I got up and looked out of the window, but I could see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there was a blur of light that showed where the moon was shining behind the clouds. The cry, if there had been a cry, was not repeated.
I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.
I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but I woke suddenly with a presentation of the little pond on the Common very clear before me.
"We never looked in the pond," I thought, and then—"but he could not have fallen into the pond; besides, it's not two feet deep."
It was full daylight, and I got up and found that it was nearly seven o'clock.
The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of low, threatening cloud that blew up from the south.