way and he might lose his way in the snow, but his heart beat like a hammer
when he thought of Stephen coming to the door and of the little spare room
where Stephen put his guests to sleep. But no--Stephen would not want him
to-night; he would be very tired and would rather be alone; and then there
would be the morning, when it would be every bit as bad, and perhaps worse.
But if he ran away altogether? ... He stopped in the middle of the road and
thought about it--the noise of the sea came up to him like the march of men
and with it the sick melancholy moan of the Bell Rock, but the rest of the
world was holding its breath, so still it seemed. But whither should he
run? He could not run so far away that his father could not find him--his
father's arm stretched to everywhere in the world. And then it was cowardly
to run away. Where was that courage of which he had been thinking so much?
So he shook his little shoulders and pulled up those stockings again and
turned up the little side road, usually so full of ruts and stones and now
so level and white with the hard snow. Now that his mind was made up, he
marched forward with unfaltering step and clanged the iron gates behind him
so that they made a horrible noise, and stepped through the desolate garden
up the gravel path.

The house looked black and grim, but there were lights behind the
dining-room windows--it was there that they were sitting, of course.

As he stood on his toes to reach the knocker a shooting star flashed past
above his head, and he could hear the bare branches of the trees knocking
against one another in the wind that always seemed to be whistling round
the house. The noise echoed terribly through the building, and then there
was a silence that was even more terrible. He could fancy how his aunt
would start and put down her Patience cards for a moment and look, in
her scared way, at the window--he knew that his father would not move
from behind his paper, and that there would be no other sound unless his