the bed-clothes, and so escape the sound of it. Anyhow, she did make haste, and in a very few minutes I was, as she supposed, snugly settled for the night. But the moment she shut the door I was out of bed, and at the window. The instant I reached it, a great dash of rain swept against the panes, and the wind howled more fiercely than ever. Believing I had the key of the position, inasmuch as, if I pleased, I could take the pendulum to bed with me, and stifle its motions with the bed-clothes—for this happy idea had dawned upon me while Nannie was undressing me—I was composed enough now to press my face to a pane, and look out. There was a small space amidst the storm dimly illuminated from the windows below, and the moment I looked—out of the darkness into this dim space, as if blown thither by the wind, rushed a figure on horseback, his large cloak flying out before him, and the mane of the animal he rode streaming out over his ears in the fierceness of the blast. He pulled up right under my window, and I thought he looked up, and made threatening gestures at me; but I believe now that horse and man pulled up in sudden danger of dashing against the wall of the house. I shrank back, and when I peeped out again he was gone. The same moment the pendulum gave a click and stopped; one more rattle of rain against the windows, and then the wind stopped also. I crept back to my bed in a new terror, for might not this be the Prince of the Power of the Air, come to see who was meddling with his affairs? Had he not come right out of the storm, and straight from the trees? He must have something to do with it all! Before I had settled the probabilities of the question, however, I was fast asleep.
I awoke—how long after, I cannot tell—with the sound of voices in my ears. It was still dark. The voices came from below. I had been dreaming of the strange horseman, who had turned out to be the awful being concerning whom Nannie had enlightened me as going about at night to buy little children from their nurses, and make bagpipes of their skins. Awaked from such a dream, it was impossible to lie still without knowing what those voices down below were talking about. The strange one must belong to the being, whatever he was, whom I had seen come out of the storm; and of whom could they be talking but me? I was right in both conclusions.
With a fearful resolution I slipped out of bed, opened the door as noiselessly as I might, and crept on my bare, silent feet down the creaking stair, which led, with open balustrade, right into the kitchen, at the end furthest from the chimney. The one candle at the other end could not illuminate its darkness, and I sat unseen, a few steps from the bottom of the stair, listening with all my ears, and staring with all my eyes. The stranger’s huge cloak hung drying before the fire, and he was drinking something out of a tumbler. The light fell full upon his face. It was a curious, and certainly not to me an attractive face. The forehead was very projecting, and the eyes were very small, deep set, and sparkling. The mouth—I had almost said muzzle—was very projecting likewise, and the lower jaw shot in front of the upper. When the man smiled the light was reflected from what seemed to my eyes an inordinate multitude of white teeth. His ears were narrow and long, and set very high upon his head. The hand which he every now and then displayed in the exigencies of his persuasion, was white, but very large, and the thumb was exceedingly long. I had weighty reasons for both suspecting and fearing the man; and, leaving my prejudices out of the question, there was in the conversation itself enough besides to make me take note of dangerous points in his appearance. I never could lay much claim to physical courage, and I attribute my behaviour on this occasion rather to the fascination of terror than to any impulse of self-preservation: I sat there in utter silence, listening like an ear-trumpet. The first words I could distinguish were to this effect:—
‘You do not mean,’ said the enemy, ‘to tell me, Mr Cumbermede, that you intend to bring up the young fellow in absolute ignorance of the decrees of fate?’
‘I pledge myself to nothing in the matter,’ returned my uncle, calmly, but with something in his tone which was new to me.
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the other. ‘Excuse me, sir, but what right can you have to interfere after such a serious fashion with the young gentleman’s future?’
‘It seems to me,’ said my uncle, ‘that you wish to interfere with it after a much more serious fashion. There are things in which ignorance may be preferable to knowledge.’
‘But what harm could the knowledge of such a fact do him?’
‘Upset all his notions, render him incapable of thinking about anything of importance, occasion an utter—’
But can anything be more important?’ interrupted the visitor.
My uncle went on without heeding him.
‘Plunge him over head and ears in—’
‘Hot water, I grant you,’ again interrupted the enemy, to my horror; ‘but it wouldn’t be for long. Only give me your sanction, and I promise you to have the case as tight as a drum before I ask you to move a step in it.’
‘But why should you take so much interest in what is purely our affair?’ asked my uncle.
‘Why, of course you would have to pay the piper,’ said the man.
This was too much! Pay the man that played upon me after I was made into bagpipes! The idea was too frightful.
‘I must look out for business, you know; and, by Jove! I shall never have such a chance, if I live to the age of Methuselah.’
‘Well, you shall not have it from me.’
‘Then,’ said the man, rising, ‘you are more of a fool than I took you for.’
‘Sir!’ said my uncle.
‘No offence; no offence, I assure you. But it is provoking to find people so blind—so wilfully blind—to their own interest. You may say I have nothing to lose. Give me the boy, and I’ll bring him up like my own son; send him to school and college, too—all on the chance of being repaid twice over by—’
I knew this was all a trick to get hold of my skin. The man said it on his way to the door, his ape-face shining dim as he turned it a little back in the direction of my uncle, who followed with the candle. I lost the last part of the sentence in the terror which sent me bounding up the stair in my usual four-footed fashion. I leaped into my bed, shaking with cold and agony combined. But I had the satisfaction presently of hearing the thud of the horse’s hoofs upon the sward, dying away in the direction whence they had come. After that I soon fell asleep.
I need hardly say that I never set the pendulum swinging again. Many years after, I came upon it when searching for a key, and the thrill which vibrated through my whole frame announced a strange and unwelcome presence long before my memory could recall its origin.
It must not be supposed that I pretend to remember all the conversation I have just set down. The words are but the forms in which, enlightened by facts which have since come to my knowledge, I clothe certain vague memories and impressions of such an interview as certainly took place.
In the morning, at breakfast, my aunt asked my uncle who it was that paid such an untimely visit the preceding night.
‘A fellow from Minstercombe’ (the county town), ‘an attorney—what did he say his name was? Yes, I remember. It was the same as the steward’s over the way. Coningham, it was.’
‘Mr Coningham has a son there—an attorney too, I think,’ said my aunt.
My uncle seemed struck by the reminder, and became meditative.
‘That explains his choosing such a night to come in. His father is getting an old man now. Yes, it must be the same.’
‘He’s a sharp one, folk say,’ said my aunt, with a pointedness in the remark which showed
