‘If it is old Wincher who has carried the light up yonder, it will move presently,’ thought Lucius; ‘he would not stay there long at such a late hour. I’ll wait and see the end of the business.’ The first note of the storm sounded as he made this resolve, a rumble of distant thunder, and then came the heavy patter of big rain-drops, shedding coolness upon the thunder-charged air. There was an open shed close at hand, and Lucius withdrew to its shelter without losing sight of the dark old house opposite, with its two lighted windows. The water and the barges lay between him and Cedar House, the wharf—used at this time as a repository for spelter—being built upon a narrow creek, or inlet from the river. He stood and watched for nearly half an hour, while the rain came down heavily and the lightning flashed across his face every now and then; but still the light burnt steadily. What could Wincher or anybody else be doing in yonder room at such an hour? Or could it be Homer Sivewright himself, roaming the house like an unquiet spirit? ‘No,’ Lucius thought, ‘he has not strength enough to mount those steep stairs without help. It cannot be Sivewright.’ Did the circumstance—trivial enough in itself, perhaps, but painfully perplexing to that anxious watcher—mean any harm? That was the question. Did it denote any peril to Lucille? Ought he to go round to the front of the house, and try to arouse the sleeping household, in order to warn them of some unknown danger? That seemed a desperate thing to do, when the circumstance, after all, might be of no moment. It was most likely Jacob Wincher. He might have eccentricities that Lucius had never heard of; and to sit up late into the night was perhaps one of his failings. Yet that mysterious light, taken in conjunction with Mr. Sivewright’s fancy about strange footsteps in the dead of the night, was not a fact to be dismissed carelessly. ‘If there were any way of getting into the house without ringing people up and frightening my patient, I would get in somehow, and find the solution of this enigma,’ thought Lucius; ‘but I daresay the doors and windows at the back are firmly fastened.’ A distant clock chimed the quarter before one, while Lucius was standing irresolute under the spelter shed. While the third slow chime was still vibrating in the silent night, the blue glare of a lightning-flash showed that eager watcher a figure upon one of the barges. Until this moment he had believed them utterly empty, save of their cargo; nor did this figure belong to either of those darksome vessels. It was the figure of a man, tall and lithe, who moved quickly along, bending his body as he crept from one barge to the other, as if shrinking from the pelting rain—a stealthy figure, upon which Lucius at once concentrated his attention.