CHAPTER III
OF THE COMING OF UNCLE ANDREW WITH A SCARRED FOREHEAD AND A BRASS-BOUND CHEST, AND HOW I TOOK AN INFECTION
It was a night—as often happens in the uplands of our shire in autumn weather—of vast and brooding darkness: the world seemed to swound in a breathless oven, and I had scarcely come to my chamber when thunder broke wild upon the world and torrential rain began to fall. I did not go to bed, but sat with my candle extinguished and watched the lightning show the landscape as if it had been flooded by the gleam of moon and star.
Between the roar of the thunder and the blatter of the rain there were intervals of an astounding stillness of an ominous suspense, and it seemed oddly to me, as I sat in my room, that more than I was awake in Hazel Den House. I felt sure my father and mother sat in their room, still clad and whispering; it was but the illusion of a moment—something felt by the instinct and not by reason—and then a louder, nearer peal of thunder dispelled the notion, and I made to go to bed.
I stopped like one shot, with my waistcoat half undone.
There was a sound of a horse's hoofs coming up the loan, with the beat of them in mire sounding soft enough to make me shiver at the notion of the rider's discomfort in that appalling night, and every now and then the metal click of shoes, showing the animal over-reached himself in the trot.
The rider drew up at the front; a flash of the lightning and the wildest thunder-peal of the night seemed to meet among our outhouses, and when the roll of the thunder ceased I heard a violent rapping at the outer door.
The servants would be long ere they let this late visitor out of the storm, I fancied, and I hurried down; but my father was there in the hall before me, all dressed, as my curious intuition had informed me, and his face strange and inscrutable in the light of a shaded candle. He was making to open the door. My appearance seemed to startle him. He paused, dubious and a trifle confused.
“I thought you had been in bed long ago,” said he, “and—”