It was not very dark in the roof-room; through the aperture in the floor, where the ladder came up, rose the light from the fire below, and there were many cracks which served the same purpose of illumination. Skimpy could see well enough the two beds where he and his brothers were wont to sleep. Garments hung from the rafters, familiar some of them and often worn, and others were antique and belonged to elders in the family long ago dead; these had never been taken down since placed there by their owners; several were falling to pieces, shred by shred, others were still fresh and filled out, and bore a familiar air of humanity. Skimpy did not approach the beds, he quietly crossed the room to the gable end, paused to listen, then opened the batten shutter of a little glassless window beside the chimney. Dark—how dark it was as he thrust out his head; he started to hear a dull swaying of the garments, among the rafters, as if they clothed again life and motion. Only the illusion of the wind, he remembered, as he strove to calm the tumultuous throbbing of his heart, his head instinctively turning toward the fluttering vestments that he could barely see. The wind still piped—not so sonorous a note, however; failing cadences it had and dying falls, as of a song that is sung to the end. Once again the boughs beat upon the eaves—and, what was that! Skimpy’s heart gave a great plunge, and he felt the blood rush to his head. A faint clatter—a ra-ta-ta, beaten drum-like on the rail fence of the “garden spot”—or was it his fancy? The wind comes again down the gorge. The althea bushes and the holly shiver together. The dead Indian corn, standing writhen and bent in the fields, sighs and sighs for the sere season. And the boughs of the tree lash the roof. An interval. And once more—ra-ta-ta! from the garden fence! And ra-ta-ta, again. XIV. The group below took no heed how the time passed. Thinking of it afterward, they said it seemed only a few moments before they heard amongst the fitful gusts of the wind, wearing away now, and the dull stirring of the tree without, a hurried, irregular footstep suddenly falling on the porch, a groping, nervous hand fumbling at the latch. “Hev ye los’ yer manners ez ye can’t knock at the door,” said Peter Sawyer sardonically, speaking through his teeth, for he still held his pipe-stem in his mouth. Ike had burst in without ceremony and stood upon the threshold, holding the door in one hand and gazing about with wild eyes, half blinded by the light, uncertain whether Skimpy was really absent or overlooked among the rest. “I—I—kem ter see Skimpy,” he faltered. Mrs. Sawyer had set the baby on the floor beside Bose, and had folded her arms stiffly. She looked at Ike with heightened color and a flashing eye.