Nothing happened save that, the silence was more awful than before. Then there was a kind of whirring noise above their heads, a moment’s pause, and the great cathedral clock began to strike midnight. “Now,” said Bartlett, “we’ve got to walk or run round the cathedral twice.” He was off, and Tommy and Jeremy after him. Jeremy was a good runner, but this was like no race that he had ever engaged in before. As he ran the notes boomed out above his head and the high shadow of the great building seemed to catch his feet and hold him. He could not see, and, as before, when he ran the rest of the world seemed to run with him, so that he was always pausing to hear whether anyone were moving with him or no. Then quite suddenly he was alone, and frightened as he had never in his life been before; no, not when the horrible sea captain had woken him in the middle of the night, not when he thought that God had killed Hamlet, not when he had first been tossed in a blanket at Thompson’s, not when he had first played second-half in a real game and had to lie down and let ten boys kick the ball from under him! His body was turned to water. He could not move. The shadows were so vast around him, the ground wavered beneath his feet, the trees on the slopes below the cathedral all nodded as though they knew that terrible things would soon happen to him—and there was no sound anywhere. What he wanted was to creep close to the cathedral, clutch the stone walls, and stay there. That was what he nearly did, and if he had done it he would have been there, I believe, until this very day. Then he remembered the Dean’s Ernest who had been too frightened to come, he remembered that he had been “dared” to run round the cathedral twice, and that he had only as yet run half round it once. His stockings were down over his ankles, both his boots now hurt him, he had lost his cap; he summoned all the pluck that there was in his soul and body combined and ran on. When he had finished his first round and was back by the west door again, there was no sign of the other two boys. He paused desperately for breath; then, as though pursued by all the evil spirits of the night, started again. This time it did not seem so long. He shut his ears to all possible sound, refused to think, and the physical pain of the stitch in his side and his two rubbed heels kept him from grosser fear. Then, just as he completed the second round, the most awful thing happened. A figure, an enormous figure it seemed to poor Jeremy, rose out of the ground, a figure with flapping wings; a great light was flashed in the air; a strange, high voice screamed aloud. The figure moved towards him. That was enough for his courage. As though death itself were behind him, he took to his heels, tore across the grass, plunged through the stile into Parson’s Yard. The little shadow had been like a curve of wind on the grass. High in the air rose the cry: