that there were no windows in it, that it stood, like an eyeless skull, in that gaunt forest of skeleton trees, empty and desolate, beaten by the ungenial hail, the dead rain of the country of death.  I passed round to the other side, stepping gently lest some ear might be awake—­as if any ear, even that of Judy’s white wolf, could have heard the loudest step in such a storm.  I heard the hailstones crush between my feet and the soft grass of the lawn, but I dared not stop to look up at the back of the house.  I went on to the staircase in the rock, and by its rude steps, dangerous in the flapping of such storm-wings as swept about it that night, descended to the little grove below, around the deep-walled pool.  Here the wind did not reach me.  It roared overhead, but, save an occasional sigh, as if of sympathy with their suffering brethren abroad in the woild, the hermits of this cell stood upright and still around the sleeping water.  But my heart was a well in which a storm boiled and raged; and all that “pother o’er my head” was peace itself compared to what I felt.  I sat down on the seat at the foot of a tree, where I had first seen Miss Oldcastle reading.  And then I looked up to the house.  Yes, there was a light there!  It must be in her window.  She then could not rest any more than I. Sleep was driven from her eyes because she must wed the man she would not; while sleep was driven from mine because I could not marry the woman I would.  Was that it?  No.  My heart acquitted me, in part at least, of thinking only of my own sorrow in the presence of her greater distress.  Gladly would I have given her up for ever, without a hope, to redeem her from such a bondage.  “But it would be to marry another some day,” suggested the tormentor within.  And then the storm, which had a little abated, broke out afresh in my soul.  But before I rose from her seat I was ready even for that—­at least I thought so—­if only I might deliver her from the all but destruction that seemed to be impending over her.  The same moment in which my mind seemed to have arrived at the possibility of such a resolution, I rose almost involuntarily, and glancing once more at the dull light in her window—­for I did not doubt that it was her window, though it was much too dark to discern, the shape of the house—­almost felt my way to the stair, and climbed again into the storm.

But I was quieter now, and able to go home.  It must have been nearly morning, though at this season of the year the morning is undefined, when I reached my own house.  My sister had gone to bed, for I could always let myself in; nor, indeed, did any one in Marshmailows think the locking of the door at night an imperative duty.