‘It comes from the church or from behind the church,’ I said, as the shriek was followed by an angry murmur as of muffled thunder.  All had occurred within the space of half a second.  I quickly but cautiously opened my bedroom door, extinguishing my light before doing so, and began to creep downstairs, fearing to wake my mother.  My shoes creaked, so I took them off and carried them.  Crossing the hall, I softly drew the bolts of the front door; then I passed into the moonlight.  The gravel of the carriage-drive cut through my stockings, and a pebble bruised one of my heels so that I nearly fell.  When I got safely under the shadow of the large cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the lawn, I stopped and looked up at my mother’s window to see if she were a watcher.  The blinds were down, there was no movement, no noise.  Evidently she was asleep.  I put on my shoes and hurried across the lawn towards the high road.  I walked at a sharp pace towards the old church.  The bark of a distant dog or the baa of a waking sheep was the only sound.  When I reached the churchyard, I peered in dread over the lich-gate before I opened it.  Neither Wynne nor any living creature was to be seen in the churchyard.

The soothing smell of the sea came from the cliffs, making me wonder at my fears.  On the loneliest coast, in the dunnest night, a sense of companionship comes with the smell of seaweed.  At my feet spread the great churchyard, with its hundreds of little green hillocks and white gravestones, sprinkled here and there with square, box-like tombs.  All quietly asleep in the moonlight!  Here and there an aged headstone seemed to nod to its neighbour, as though muttering in its dreams.  The old church, bathed in the radiance, seemed larger than it had ever done in daylight, and incomparably more grand and lonely.

On the left were the tall poplar trees, rustling and whispering among themselves.  Still, there might be at the back of the church mischief working.  I walked round thither.  The ghostly shadows on the long grass might have been shadows thrown by the ruins of Tadmor, so quietly did they lie and dream.  A weight was uplifted from my soul.  A balm of sweet peace fell upon my heart.  The noises I had heard had been imaginary, conjured up by love and fear; or they might have been an echo of distant thunder.  The windows of the church no doubt looked ghastly, as I peered in to see whether Wynne’s lantern was moving about.  But all was still.  I lingered in the churchyard close by the spot where I had first seen the child Winifred and heard the Welsh song.

I went to look at the sea from the cliff.  Here, however, there was something sensational at last.  The spot where years ago I had sat when Winifred’s song had struck upon my ear and awoke me to a new life—­was gone!  ‘This then was the noise I heard,’ I said; ’the rumbling was the falling of the earth; the shriek was the tearing down of trees.’

Another slice, a slice weighing thousands of tons, had slipped since the afternoon from the churchyard on to the sands below.  ’Perhaps the tread of the townspeople who came to witness the funeral may have given the last shake to the soil,’ I said.