Saturday was the gloomiest day of all. It was gusty from the beginning, but until the afternoon the wind was only sportive, and contented itself with rude schoolboy pranks. By five o'clock, however, its mood had changed and its force increased fourfold, and by six o'clock it had cast off all restraint and become a tempest.
Whilst I remained in the Hall I hardly realised its fury, for the house is well built and shielded from the full force of the northerly winds. It was when I ventured out to visit Martha Treffit soon after dinner that I became aware of it.
The squire had left the table with a severe headache, and retired to his own room where, with drawn blinds and absolute quietude, he usually finds ease, and I was left to my own devices and the tender mercies of the Cynic, when he should arrive.
But his train was not due until eight, and it would take him a good thirty minutes to walk from the station, so I had more than an hour at my disposal, and I was anxious to find out how little Lucy was progressing. She had been under the care of the doctor for several days, and was still in bed and very feverish.
I put on my ulster, wound a wrap about my head, and stepped out on to the drive, and it was then that I became aware of the raging elements around me.
The wind blew bitingly from the north, charged with smarting pellets of sleet. I had known strong winds before, but never anything like this. It howled and roared, it hissed and shrieked; it was as much as I could do to force my way forward against the pressure of its onrush; but though my head was bent I saw that every bush and shrub was shaken as by some gigantic Titan, and that the tall and naked trees swayed towards me with groans that sounded human and ominous.
On the topmost branches, black bundles which I knew to be deserted nests were rocked violently to and fro, like anchored boats in the trough of a storm-lashed sea. The night was grim and black, save when for a brief moment the full moon gleamed down upon the angry scene from the torn rifts of the scurrying clouds.
The thought crossed my mind that it might be wiser to return, but Fate or Providence urged me forward, and I laughed at my fears and set my shoulder to the storm.
Phew! if it was a gale along the drive it was a hurricane in the village street, and a hot-headed, impetuous hurricane, too. Pausing for a second in its mad rush it leaped upon one the next moment with a sudden fury that seemed almost devilish and was well-nigh irresistible. Twice I was flung against the wall, but as I was hugging it pretty closely I suffered no harm. As I struggled onward the wind was in my teeth; a dozen steps farther and it leaped the wall on my right with a roar, like a pack of hounds in full cry, and tore down the fields with reckless velocity to hurl itself into the black mystery of the wood.
Not a soul was to be seen, but the clatter of a dislodged slate upon the pavement brought a frightened woman to the door of one of the cottages, and I stepped inside for a moment's breathing-space.