Other questions cropped up in their altered household,--questions of the past and the future, jostling in a mind still dazed. And it was these which, two nights after the burial on the hill, kept the young man restless. He lay revolving vague plans, resolutions, regrets, till at last, foregoing all hope of sleep, he rose, dressed in the dark, and stole downstairs to the little front room which had been his grandfather’s “library.” A puddle of ruby coals still glowed in the fireplace; but before sitting down by these, he turned toward the gray square of the windows, and stood looking out through a wide, cosmic starlight, faint and deceptive, but dimly intensified by frosty air and the whiteness of snow. Without speech or language, the heart of the darkness strengthened the heart of youth, as above the silent valley night unto night showed knowledge. Stillness without grew almost palpable, through stillness within. The house lay drowned in sleep. But suddenly Miles heard a thin, brushing sound upon the landing above, the squeak of a board, and the dry rasp of a hand sliding down the banister-rail. Some one descended with extreme caution, and then, below the row of pegs in the dark corridor, struggled into a jacket, with subdued fluttering of heavy cloth. The front door slowly creaked, and, letting chill air flood the room, as slowly creaked again. It lacked two hours before time for inspection; and besides, whoever went to the towers would carry a lantern. Miles watched. A dark, thick-set blur moved out under the starlight and disappeared between the two hackmatack pillars. Tony the sailor was up and about his affairs. Angry and determined, Miles crept along the passage, drew on his reefer as silently as the other had done, and slipped outdoors into the freezing darkness. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII HABAKKUK’S LIGHT Stars, frost, and glimmer of snow blended into a bluish, dim suffusion, a hyperborean obscurity that was neither light nor darkness. The figure ahead showed as a blotch of denser twilight, dissolving, rather than moving, down the slope. Miles prowled after, straining his eyes to detect in what quarter of the black undergrowth it was absorbed and blotted. No light, no sound, could either guide or betray him. His impulse had been to stride along, to overtake and question the sailor; but so, reflection told him, he might destroy his only chance to learn the truth. He waded onward, accordingly, with great care; and slipping through fir branches, gained free footing in the beaten path. No wind stirred; and though faint aerial changes drew widely over the valley, not a bristle whispered among all the drooping, padded layers of black and white. With the old expectancy he came to the buried quarter-deck. No one appeared.