and said furiously: "What the devil do you mean?"

"Oh, perfectly natural causes, as Dr. Brown would say,"
replied Treherne. "Didn't the Squire tell us the trees
had a shrill note of their own when the wind blew?
The wind's beating up again from the sea; I shouldn't wonder
if there was a storm before dawn."

Dawn indeed came gradually with a growing noise of wind,
and the purple sea began to boil about the dark volcanic cliffs.
The first change in the sky showed itself only in the shapes
of the wood and the single stems growing darker but clearer;
and above the gray clump, against a glimpse of growing light,
they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees. In their long lines
there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine and even spiral.
He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in
some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion
of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep.
In dreams he toiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales,
each filled with the same stress and noise of sea and sea wind;
and above and outside all other voices the wailing of the
Trees of Pride.

When he woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay
on wood and garden and on fields and farms for miles away.
The comparative common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless
drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions
standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy.
There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting
to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever