l
have gone too far along one road, without having explored the other.
But I can't go back now. I wouldn't if I could; not a step would I
retrace! In any case, whatever the revelation is, it will be God. I'm
sure of that."

* * * * *

The rainy weather soon passed, and with the return of the sun Darcy
again joined Frank in long rambling days. It grew extraordinarily
hotter, and with the fresh bursting of life, after the rain, Frank's
vitality seemed to blaze higher and higher. Then, as is the habit of
the English weather, one evening clouds began to bank themselves up in
the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the
whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness
paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of
lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bed-time
came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low
unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed by the
stress of the day, Darcy fell at once into a heavy uncomforting sleep.

He woke suddenly into full consciousness, with the din of some
appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with
racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the
panic-land which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence,
except for the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window.
But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by
a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a
scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again and once again it
shrilled up, and then a babble of awful words was interjected. A
quivering sobbing voice that he knew, said:

"My God, oh, my God; oh, Christ!"

And then followed a little mocking, bleating laugh. Then was silence
again; only the rain hissed on the shrubs.

All this was but the affair of a moment, and without pause either to
put on clothes or light a candle, Darcy was already fumbling at his
door-handle. Even as he opened it he met a terror-stricken face
outside, that of the man-servant who carried a light.

"Did you hear?" he asked.

The man's face was bleached to a dull shining whiteness.

"Yes, sir," he said. "It was the master's voice."

* * * * *

Together they hurried down the stairs, and through the dining-room
where an orderly table for breakfast h