'It really seems, Maud, as if he had a supernatural sense, and heard things through the air over fifty miles of heath and hill. You remember how, just as he was probably writing that very postscript yesterday, I was urging you to come and stay with me, and planning to move Dr. Bryerly in our favour. And so I will, Maud, and to me you _shall_ come--my guest, mind--I should be so delighted; and really if Silas is under a cloud, it has been his own doing, and I don't see that it is your business to fight his battle. He can't live very long. The suspicion, whatever it is dies with him, and what could poor dear Austin prove by his will but what everybody knew quite well before--his own strong belief in Silas's innocence? What an awful storm! The room trembles. Don't you like the sound? What they used to call 'wolving' in the old organ at Dorminster!' CHAPTER XXVI _THE STORY OF UNCLE SILAS_ And so it was like the yelling of phantom hounds and hunters, and the thunder of their coursers in the air--a furious, grand and supernatural music, which in my fancy made a suitable accompaniment to the discussion of that enigmatical person--martyr--angel--demon--Uncle Silas--with whom my fate was now so strangely linked, and whom I had begun to fear. 'The storm blows from that point,' I said, indicating it with my hand and eye, although the window shutters and curtains were closed. 'I saw all the trees bend that way this evening. That way stands the great lonely wood, where my darling father and mother lie. Oh, how dreadful on nights like this, to think of them--a vault!--damp, and dark, and solitary--under the storm.' Cousin Monica looked wistfully in the same direction, and with a short sigh she said--