"It's some one," declared Maria, who was asleep before it came, so rarely heard it at all. And they turned to Uncle Felix who knew all that sort of thing, or at any rate could describe it. He found the words. They lay hidden in his thick back hair apparently--there was little on the top!--for he always scratched his head a good deal when they asked him questions about such difficult matters. "What is it _really_--the Night-Wind?" they asked gravely; "and why does it sound so _very_ different from the wind in the morning or the afternoon?" "There _is_ a difference," he replied carefully. "It's a quick, dark, rushing thing, and it moves like--like anything." "We know _that_," they told him. "And it has long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes--that's its hair against the walls and tiles, you see." "It _is_ a woman, then?" said Tim proudly. All looked up, wondering. An extraordinary thing was in the air. A mystery that had puzzled them for ages was about to be explained. They drew closer round the sofa, and Maria blundered against the table, knocking some books off with a resounding noise. It was their way of reminding him that he had promised. "Hush, hush!" said Uncle Felix, holding up a finger and glancing over his shoulder into the darkened room. "It may be coming now... Listen!" "Yes, but it is a woman, isn't it?" insisted Tim, in a hurried whisper. He had to justify himself before his sisters. Uncle Felix must see to that first. The big man opened his eyes very wide. He shuddered. "It's a--Thing," was the answer, given in a whisper that increased the excitement of anticipation. "It certainly is a--Thing! Now hush! It's coming!" They listened then intently. And a sound _was_ heard. Out of the starry summer night it came, quite softly, and from very far away--upon discovery bent, upon adventure. Reconnoitering, as from some deep ambush in the shrubberies where the blackbirds hid and whistled, it flew down against the house, stared in at the nursery windows, fluttered up and down the glass with a marvellous, sweet humming--and was gone again. "Listen!" the man's voice whispered; "it will come back presently. It saw us. It's awfully shy--" "Why is it awfully shy?" asked Judy in an undertone. "Because people make it mean so much more than it means to mean," he replied darkly. "It never gets a chance to be just itself and play its own lonely game--" "We've called it things," she stated. "But we haven't written books about it and put it into poetry," Uncle Felix corrected her with an audacity that silenced them. "We play our game; it plays its." "It plays its," repeated Tim, amused by the sound of the words. "And that's why it's shy," the man held them to the main point, "and dislikes showing itself--"