Night fell, and the pitiless tempest raged on, but with the coming of the darkness one sign of cheer displayed itself. From the windows of the plain old grey-stone mansion on the eastern side of the Beacon Hill lights began to glow, first in this chamber and then in that, until the whole squat edifice seemed charged with warmth and comfort. The tempest poured its full strength against the grey-stone house. It shook the windows with its frantic hand, it shrieked and howled and roared amongst the chimney tops and gables, it strained the hasps of the staunch oaken doors, and the old house faced it with a broadening smile, and shone the brighter by contrast as the night grew blacker. In the whole roaring region there was but one man to be found abroad, and he was making for the grey-stone house. He was a portly person with a prosperous-looking development about the neighbourhood of the lower waistcoat, and he was sorely tried, though he was as yet on the sheltered side of the hill. His heavy black broadcloth was soaked through and through, and weighed him down. The icy wet had chilled him, and he breathed hard at every laboured step. One stiff slope of some fifty yards had still to be surmounted before he reached the hill-top. Twenty yards further lay the house, with all windows beaming. It was as yet invisible to him, but in his mind’s eye he could see it, and the thought of it gave him courage. He turned his back to the plunging rain, and paused to gather breath before he assaulted the last slope of the hill. He had lost his hat, and the water trickled out of his hair in rivulets. ‘I’ve seen worse weather than any they can brew in the neighbourhood of Beacon Hargate,’ he panted to himself, ‘but it’s one thing to have a good tight craft under your feet, and it’s another to be bogged in the dark, over half a mile of rotten plough-land. All right, my lads, you haven’t got Jack Jervase under yet. Here goes.’ With this he faced the hill and the rain again, and made his difficult and slippery way upward, impeded by his clinging clothes, and snorting like a grampus. Right at the crown of the hill, most fortunately for the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered a second time: ‘All right, my lads. You haven’t got Jack Jervase yet.’