other things because his imagination was fixed upon one ambition,
and one alone. He had made, upon this last and fatal occasion, haste
to find his collar because the bell had begun its Evensong clatter
and he did not wish to-night to be late. The bell continued to ring
and he lay his broad widespread length upon the floor. He was a
large and dirty man.

The shabby old house was occupied with its customary life. Down in
the kitchen Ellen the cook was snatching a moment from her labours
to drink a cup of tea. She sat at the deal table, her full bosom
pressed by the boards, her saucer balanced on her hand; she blew,
with little heaving pants, at her tea to cool it. Her thoughts were
with a new hat and some red roses with which she would trim it; she
looked out with little shivers of content at the falling winter's
dusk: Anne the kitchen-maid scoured the pans; her bony frame seemed
to rattle as she scrubbed with her red hands; she was happy because
she was hungry and there would be a beef-steak pudding for dinner.
She sang to herself as she worked.

Upstairs in the dining-room Maggie Cardinal, the only child of the
Rev. Charles, sat sewing. She hoard the jangling of the church hell;
she heard also, suddenly, with a surprise that made her heart beat
for a moment with furious leaps, a tapping on the window-pane. Then
directly after that she fancied that there came from her father's
room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She listened.
The bell swallowed all other noise. She thought that she had been
mistaken, but the tapping at the window began again, now insistent;
the church bell suddenly stopped and in the silence that followed
one could hear the slight creak of some bough driven by the sea-wind
against the wall.