So was the tempest. It would be nearing its end, and would drop as suddenly as it had arisen; and Searell was smiling as he read of the beasts of the forest weeping as they listened to the song-wind of Gunadhya. "I can't go out. Might see it crawling up-along, trying to come back, little white thing in the dark." Oliver could see Sibley was speaking, making with her agonized mouth the shape of words, "Go out." He could not, dared not, had not even the courage to open the door and look down the dimly lighted horror of the stairs. They were in the last stage of weakness, the one morally, the other physically; and the almighty strength of the wind gave them nothing except the security of its tumult. "It'll be over," he shuddered. "The watter wur coming up all white. I couldn't bide there--there wur drops o' summat on my face, and 'twur so helpless, and it looked up. Blue, warn't 'em blue, woman?'" Sibley could not have heard, but, with all those instincts quivering, she recognized the word upon his lips and tried to nod. "Innocent. Hadn't done nought. Would ha' kep we good, made we man and wife. I'll go down. I'd go down if I dared--the little chin wur agin my cheek. I'll never face the dark. I'd see it move, and the little drowning bubbles on the watter. Be it over now?" He glared at Sibley as if she could answer; and she stared back, asking, pleading, imploring him to play the man and face the night again; but he grovelled against the wall and shuddered, damp with an awful sweat, and the weird light upon the mountain-tops went out, because other clouds were coming up, having travelled far since evening, and the darkness became real as the roarings of the dry wind decreased. It was getting on towards midnight, and those mighty winds were tired. "Go!" came a sudden scream; and Searell heard the echo of it and started. The cry seemed to have its origin in the storm. He closed his book, listened, heard nothing more except the coherent bellowing, and then he answered, "I will." Certainly the word had sounded, and as certainly he was alone. The Vorses would have been asleep for hours. "I will walk along the path. It is sheltered down there," he murmured. "This may be the night appointed, the time of revelation, the time of young life. This is the mad music of the spring, the shattering of the chains of winter. The growth follows. It is the birth-night." He wrapped a coat around him and went. During those few minutes the wind had much decreased; in another hour it would be calm and clear; and then the awful stillness of the sunrise and the perpetual wonder of the daylight.