the mischief was hatched from the beginning! Forward, mare! Why do we lag here in the rain, when company is awaiting us at home? Forward!' Goaded by whip and spur, the mare put herself to her best speed, and before many minutes Sir Norman knew, less by any visible sign than by the direction and inclination of the road, that the Tower was near. He drew rein, and paused for a moment. Should he take his mare to the stable now, or--afterwards? He resolved on the latter course. Keeping as much as possible on the turf, and feeling rather than seeing his way, he pressed cautiously forward until he found himself almost beneath the branches of the Oak. There he dismounted. The din of the tempest was bewildering. The waves came thundering against the shore with such headlong power that a tremor of the earth was perceptible every time they struck. There was a fury of white foam beneath the rocky, overhanging parapet, on which the Oak stood, and this whiteness extended far out, until the blackness of the night prevailed over it. Occasionally sounds like moaning and sighing seemed to come from the mid-tumult of the sea, as if some huge creature were complaining there: and the driving spray and the rain assumed strange drifting forms, like disembodied spirits hurtling through the air. But terrible as was the sea, the Oak was more terrible still. It fought the wild wind with its great arms like a mad creature. Its cumbrous foliage flapped and hissed through the wet gale like the matted locks of a wrestling giant. Its whole vast frame rocked to and fro, as if it were about to tear itself up from its rooted place, and go forth to meet and struggle with the storm. And from the grinding together of the mighty boughs were generated shrieks and human-like outcries and noises like weeping and like mocking laughter, as though a knot of evil spirits were tearing each other to pieces in the central darkness of the tree; or were they combining to torture and torment some newly-captured human soul? Dimly, meanwhile, through the murky obscurity, glowed three red squares of light from the Tower, where Lady Kildhurm and her sister waited for Sir Norman's return. The Baronet saw the light, and a vision of the two innocent and loving women rose before his mind; and of the infant boy, lulled asleep in his crib by the muffled voices of the gale. All that was as a foreign country to him now; all the more alien because it had been so intimately his own. He turned his back upon it, and fixed his regard upon the haunted Oak. He stepped beneath the wide spread of the labouring branches; then, with a leap from the ground, he caught the lowest of these between his arms, and in another moment had swung himself up into the heart of the tree, and out of sight of earth and sky. * * * * * 'He has been gone more than two hours,' said Lady Kildhurm, breaking silence at last.