At the Pride the fire sank a little, and the dogs grew more restless with every five minutes that passed. The clock on the stairs struck half-past one, and Wolf stood up stiffly. “Time we were abed,” he said. She looked up at him for a minute without moving. She would have preferred to stay where she was, gleaning a little false assurance of security from the red coals, but, after all, what difference could it make? She raked out the fire after her usual custom, and Wolf turned the lamp to a dying flicker and lighted the bedroom candle. The whittering flame caught their son’s eyes looking down under drawn brows from the mantel, and they stared at him together in silence. At that very moment Lup was fighting to get to them in vain, and all the way his heart was saying the same words: “Wait of me, Mother! Wait--_wait_!” There was no change in the wildness of the night; only, upstairs, it seemed more apparent. The frightened dogs scratched and howled at the bedroom door until it opened, when they fled under the bed and lay shivering and whining in mortal fear. The old clock beat steadily on the stairs. A shrieking gust tore at the window as the old couple knelt at the bedside for their evening prayer, but they were not afraid. In the little kitchen, Love had wrapped them round with a golden moment from the past, but here a higher angel spread protecting wings. The roar of the night increased suddenly in volume, and after it there came the special voice that had called the whole trembling marsh to listen--the voice of the sea. And, as if listening also, in the middle of its steady swing, without whirr or warning, like the last, soft, never-repeated breath of the gently-dead, the clock stopped. * * * * * His lordship’s car never got to Pippin. About one o’clock, old Willie woke as if a finger had touched him, and struck a light. He had barely flung on his clothes before the tide had leaped the bank and swung round the farm like the turning flow riding a stranded yacht. By the time he had roused his wife and daughter, the water was in the house, half-a-dozen feet on the ground floor and climbing the stairs. The elder woman crouched on the bed and wept for her best parlour furniture, bumping below like rocked boats anchored aside; but Holliday thought of his prize beasts drowning in their pens, of his ewes choking in the fields, and--lastly--of his lads racing home against the sea. Would they trick the tide? And more--if saved themselves--would there be any home at all for them by morning?