holas Top would sit unstrung and
wistful in his great chair by the west window, with the curtains drawn
wide, there waiting, in deepening gloom and fear, for the last light
to leave the world. With his head fallen upon his breast and his eyes
grown fixed and tragical with far-off gazing, he would look out upon
the appalling sweep of sea and rock and sky, where the sombre wonder
of the dusk was working more terribly than with thunder: clouds in
embers, cliffs and mist and tumbling water turning to shadows,
vanishing, as though they were not. In the place of a shining world,
spread familiar and open, from its paths to the golden haze of its
uttermost parts, there would come the cloud and mystery and straying
noises of the night, wherein lurk and peer and restlessly move
whatsoever may see in the dark.

Thus would he sit oppressed while night covered the world he knew by
day. And there would come up from the sea its voice; and the sea has
no voice, but mysteriously touches the strings within the soul of a
man, so that the soul speaks in its own way, each soul lifting its
peculiar message. For me 'twas sweet to watch the tender shadows creep
upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear
the sea's melodious whispering; but to him (it seemed) the sea spoke
harshly and the night came with foreboding. In the silence and failing
light of the hour, looking upon the stupendous works of the Lord, he
would repeat the words of the prophet of the Lord:

"_For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like
a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the
flames of fire._" And again, with his hand upon his forehead and his
brows fallen hopelessly, "_With his chariots like a whirlwind, to
render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire._"
Still repeating the awful words, his voice broken to a terrified
whisper, "_His rebuke with the flames of fire!_" And in particular
moods, when the prophets, however sonorous, were inadequate to his
need, my uncle would have recourse to his own pithy vocabulary for
terms with which to anathematize himself; but these, of course, may
not be written in a book.

* * * * *

When the dusk was come my uncle would turn blithely from this
melancholy contemplation and call for a lamp and his bottle. While I
was about this business (our maid-servant would not handle the bottle
lest she be da