ng had much ado to sit quietly
and endure. I remembered that as the storm raged without and tore at
the door-hinges, while the rain lashed and smote the tamarisk
branches against the panes, I sat by her knee before the kitchen fire
and read bits from my favourite "Holy War," which, in the pauses of
the storm, she would explain to me.

I was much put to it that night, I recollect, by the questionable
morality at one point of Captain Credence, who in general was my
favourite hero, dividing that honour with General Boanerges for
the most part, but exciting more sympathy by reason of his wound--so
grievously I misread the allegory, or rather saw no allegory at
all. So my mother explained it to me, though all the while, poor
creature, her heart was racked with terror for _her_ Mansoul, beaten,
perhaps, at that moment from its body by the fury of that awful
night. Then when the fable's meaning was explained, and my
difficulty smoothed away, we fell to talking of father's home-coming,
in vain endeavours to cheat ourselves of the fears that rose again
with every angry bellow of the tempest, and agreed that his ship
could not possibly be due yet (rejoicing at this for the first time),
but must, we feigned, be lying in a dead calm off the West Coast of
Africa; until we almost laughed--God pardon us!--at the picture of
his anxiety to be home while such a storm was raging at the doors of
Lantrig. And then I listened to wonderful stories of the East Indies
and the marvels that men found there, and wondered whether father
would bring home a parrot, and if it would be as like Aunt Loveday as
the parrot down at the "Lugger Inn," at Polkimbra, and so crept
upstairs to bed to dream of Captain Credence and parrots, and the
"Lugger Inn" in the city of Mansoul, as though no fiends were
shouting without and whirling sea and sky together in one devil's
cauldron.

How long I slept I know not; but I woke with the glare of a candle in
my eyes, to see my mother, all in white, standing by the bed, and in
her eyes an awful and soul-sickening horror.

"Jasper, Jasper! wake up and listen!"

I suppose I must have been still half asleep, for I lay looking at
her with dazzled sight, not rightly knowing whether this vision were
real or part of my strange dreams.

"Jasper, for the love of God wake up!"

At this, so full were her words of mortal fear, I shook off my
drowsiness and sat up in bed, wide awake now and staring at the
strange appari