Steve at last fell asleep in his chair. His heavy-laboured breathing had the sound of a child sobbing. Deirdre looked up from her work, again and again, troubled by it. It increased her sense of desperation to hear him. The sound became unendurable. She got up at last and awakened him.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, Uncle Steve," she said, impatiently. "You'll catch your death of cold like this. It's too late for anybody to be coming our way now—and a bad night. I'll lock up."
"Yes, Deirdre," he murmured sleepily; "it's a bad night and too late for anybody to be coming our way."
She pulled the bolts across the doors at the front of the shanty and locked and bolted the door from the bar into the kitchen; then she took his arm, and helped him out of his chair. He had fallen back into it, nodding drowsily again. She led him over to his room, which opened off the kitchen.
"I'll see the lights and the fires are out," she said, "but I want to finish a bit of mending before I go to bed."
"Right," he murmured. "Right, Deirdre!"
The noise of the wind carried off the droning tones of his voice; but it was only a few moments before she heard his heavy breathing again.
The Schoolmaster's sock which she was darning dropped from her hand.
She stared into the darkness beyond the dip-light. She did not want to go to bed—to be alone in the darkness with her thoughts. In the kitchen she heard the creaking gossip of the fire and the whisper of falling embers. Besides, she wanted to keep her hands and brain busy. In the darkness there would be only the voice of the wind in her ears, and that was like the crying of her heart. She listened to the wind now. A mournful, passionate thing, it murmured about the house, rising wildly, desperately, in blasts of sudden rage, and fell back into a thin, pitiful wailing of helplessness and despair. She was afraid to listen long, afraid of what this communicating, interpreting murmur might do with her reason. Yet the wind was with her, she thought. The wind knew her heart—the wind was the voice of her heart crying out there in the darkness.
She shivered, trying to banish the strange, fantastical ideas that swarmed upon her.