How long I sat thus gazing at the now self-impelled instrument, I
cannot say. The next point in the progress of the legend, is a gust of
wind rattling the window in whose recess I was seated. I jumped from my
chair in terror. While I had been absorbed in the pendulum, the evening
had closed in; clouds had gathered over the sky, and all was gloomy
about the house. It was much too dark to see the distant trees, but
there could be no doubt they were at work. The pendulum had roused
them. Another, a third, and a fourth gust rattled and shook the rickety
frame. I had done it at last! The trees were busy away there in the
darkness. I and my pendulum could make the wind.

The gusts came faster and faster, and grew into blasts which settled
into a steady gale. The pendulum went on swinging to and fro, and the
gale went on increasing in violence. I sat half in terror, half in
delight, at the awful success of my experiment. I would have opened the
window to let in the coveted air, but that was beyond my knowledge and
strength. I could make the wind blow, but, like other magicians, I
could not share in its benefits. I would go out and meet it on the open
plain. I crept down the stair like a thief--not that I feared
detention, but that I felt such a sense of the important, even the
dread, about myself and my instrument, that I was not in harmony with
souls reflecting only the common affairs of life. In a moment I was in
the middle of a storm--for storm it very nearly was and soon became. I
rushed to and fro in the midst of it, lay down and rolled in it, and
laughed and shouted as I looked up to the window where the pendulum was
swinging, and thought of the trees at work away in the dark. The wind
grew stronger and stronger. What if the pendulum should not stop at
all, and the wind went on and on, growing louder and fiercer, till it
grew mad and blew away the house? Ah, then, poor grannie would have a
chance of being buried at last! Seriously, the affair might grow