that our bell?" cried Mrs. Ridley, bending forward in a
listening attitude.

The nurse opened the chamber door and stood hearkening for a moment or
two. Not hearing the servant stir, she ran quickly down stairs to the
street door and drew it open, but found no one.

There was a look of suspense and fear in Mrs. Ridley's face when the
nurse came back:

"Who was it?"

"No one," replied the nurse. "The wind deceived you."

A groan came from Mrs. Ridley's lips as she sank down upon the bed,
where, with her face hidden, she lay as still as if sleeping. She did
not move nor speak for the space of more than half an hour, and all the
while her nurse waited and listened through the weird, incessant noises
of the storm for the coming of Dr. Hillhouse, but waited and listened
in vain.

All at once, as if transferred to within a few hundred rods of these
anxious watchers, the great clock of the city, which in the still hours
of a calm night could be heard ringing out clear but afar off, threw a
resonant clang upon the air, pealing the first stroke of the hour of
twelve. Mrs. Ridley started up in bed with a scared look on her face.
Away the sound rolled, borne by the impetuous wind-wave that had caught
it up as the old bell shivered it off, and carried it away so swiftly
that it seemed to die almost in the moment it was born. The listeners
waited, holding their breaths. Then, swept from the course this first
peal had taken, the second came to their ears after a long interval
muffled and from a distance, followed almost instantly by the third,
which went booming past them louder than the first. And so, with
strange intervals and variations of time and sound as the wind dashed
wildly onward or broke and swerved from its course, the noon of night
was struck, and the silence that for a brief time succeeded left a
feeling of awe upon the hearts of these lonely women.

To the ears of another had come these strange and solemn tones, struck
out at midnight away up in the clear rush of the tempest, and swept
away in a kind of mad sport, and tossed about in the murky sky. To the
ears of another, who, struggling and battling with the storm, had made
his way with something of a blind instinct to within a short distance
of his home, every stroke of the clock seemed to come from a different
quarter; and when the last peal rang out, it left him in helpless
bewilderment. When he staggered on again, it was in a direction
opposite to that i