Happily there came to-night no appealing cry. Even if it had pierced its way through wind and rain, those whom it summoned could only have watched and waited for one of those strange freaks by which the sea now and again elects to spare a human life. At the height of the gale, when gust upon gust followed each other with ever increasing fury, we were still seated in the drawing-room under various pretences. Ronald and I said openly that we were afraid of venturing our lives in the upper rooms, just under the chimneys. Our uncle jeered at our cowardice, but stayed where he was. “The noise would prevent my sleeping,” he said, “but, as for danger, I’d as lief sleep in the garrets as anywhere; only the servants’ beds ain’t as comfortable as my own. The old house’ll last our time yet.” As if in answer to his boast, the gale made another defiant howl. It was answered by a dull crash, followed by a continuous roar of falling materials—followed again by a dead silence that was audible above the rush of wind and rain. It took us only a few minutes to satisfy ourselves that the fabric of the house was safe. It was a chimney stablewards that had gone, crashing through a hay loft and lumber room right down on the top of our ghostly carriage, and clearing Broadwater of spiders for the period of our lives. Even the uncle himself could find no plea for extending his protection to a mass of shivered fragments. If the powers of darkness had destroyed their own handiwork, or failed in ability to protect it, there was no reason to suppose that the hand of man would be more successful. So the fiat went forth—not, I believe, without great searching of heart on the part of our uncle—and carriage and cobwebs, and even the stable itself were swept away, and, as Bunyan says, I saw them no more. “Well, I’m glad that it’s gone,” said a quiet, sweet voice at my elbow, as Ronald and I were watching the departure of the last load of materials. And, turning, I saw before me the woman who was to be the guiding star of Ronald’s life, yes, and my own life too. She was little more than a girl then—only a few years older than Ronald himself—with a great calm truthfulness in her eyes, and the air of one who had already known sorrow, and been refined, not hardened, by the experience.