her presage proved too true.

The sun had set an hour and more. It was dark; and an awful
thunder-storm, whose march, like the distant reverberations of an
invading army, had been faintly heard beyond the barriers of Blarwyn
Fells throughout the afternoon, was near them now, and had burst in
deep-mouthed battle among the ravines at the other side, and over the
broad lake, that glared like a sheet of burnished steel under its
flashes of dazzling blue. Wild and fitful blasts sweeping down the
hollows and cloughs of the fells of Golden Friars agitated the lake, and
bent the trees low, and whirled away their sere leaves in melancholy
drift in their tremendous gusts. And from the window, looking on a scene
enveloped in more than the darkness of the night, you saw in the
pulsations of the lightning, before "the speedy gleams the darkness
swallowed," the tossing trees and the flying foam and eddies on the
lake.

In the midst of the hurlyburly, a loud and long knocking came at the
hall-door of Mardykes. How long it had lasted before a chance lull made
it audible I do not know.

There was nothing picturesquely poor, any more than there were evidences
of wealth, anywhere in Sir Bale Mardykes' household. He had no lack of
servants, but they were of an inexpensive and homely sort; and the
hall-door being opened by the son of an old tenant on the estate--the
tempest beating on the other side of the house, and comparative shelter
under the gables at the front--he saw standing before him, in the
agitated air, a thin old man, who muttering, it might be, a benediction,
stepped into the hall, and displayed long silver tresses, just as the
storm had blown them, ascetic and eager features, and a pair of large
light eyes that wandered wildly. He was dressed in threadbare black; a
pair of long leather gaiters, buckled high above his knee, protecting
his thin shanks through moss and pool; and the singularity of his
appearance was heightened by a wide-leafed felt hat, over which he had
tied his handkerchief, so as to bring the leaf of it over his ears, and
to secure it from being whirled from his head by the storm.

This odd and storm-beaten figure--tall, and a little stooping, as well
as thin--was not unknown to the servant, who saluted him with something
of fear as well as of respect as he bid him reverently welcome, and
asked him to come in and sit by the fire.

"Get you to your master, and tell him I have a message to him from one
h