If the thoughts which are coursing through my brain at this moment be not less gruesome to read than they are to write, this chapter will, I fear, be but sorry reading; for I feel strangely depressed and nervous, as I settle down to the opening pages of my diary. The wind is raging and roaring outside until the stout walls of the house seem to rock and sway like tree-tops, and the sudden gusts and squalls make my startled heart bound and beat faster in my bosom, and turn me sick with a sense of loneliness and of loss. Even when I lie warm in my bed the sound of the wind at midnight strikes a chill through me, so that I shiver in spite of the blankets. As it comes shrieking and sobbing through key-hole and lattice, the very doors and windows seem to partake of my superstition, and to be touched with some uncanny dread; for long after it has died away I hear them creaking complainingly among themselves, as if they too were nervous and in fear. In the wind's shriek at such times there is always to me some suggestion of the sights it has seen, and of the ruin it has wrought. I seem to see, as I listen to its wailing, a weary moon that looks out white and wan upon a bleak heath, where a dead woman lies straining a living babe to her milkless breast; or upon a waste of hurrying waters that heave and roar and hurl themselves in huge billows upon one desolate figure, clinging despairingly to a broken mast. And then there is a sudden lull in the storm; the moon is hidden by clouds once more, and the infant's wail, the strong man's cry, and the shriek of the wind, gloating in savage exultation over its ghastly secrets, die away into a distant rumble, and all is still save the beating of my heart, and the stealthy creaking of door and casement. Even as I write I can hear its wailing so die away in the distance, and I seem to see it crouching, still and quiet and panther-like, yet ever gathering itself together, and creeping nearer and nearer, so that it may take me unaware, and in one sudden bound sweep down upon me, as an eagle swoops upon his prey, and bear me away to destruction. Listen to it now!--whistling, wailing, shrieking, like a live thing! Is it any wonder, on such a night, and with a sound in the air like that of innumerable lamentations, that I feel strangely conscious of the near approach of death, and cannot dissociate my thoughts from "The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm?"