‘He an’t blown away, I suppose,’ said Parkes. ‘It’s enough to carry a man of his figure off his legs, and easy too. Do you hear it? It blows great guns, indeed. There’ll be many a crash in the Forest to-night, I reckon, and many a broken branch upon the ground to-morrow.’

‘It won’t break anything in the Maypole, I take it, sir,’ returned old John. ‘Let it try. I give it leave—what’s that?’

‘The wind,’ cried Parkes. ‘It’s howling like a Christian, and has been all night long.’

‘Did you ever, sir,’ asked John, after a minute’s contemplation, ‘hear the wind say “Maypole”?’

‘Why, what man ever did?’ said Parkes.

‘Nor “ahoy,” perhaps?’ added John.

‘No. Nor that neither.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Mr Willet, perfectly unmoved; ‘then if that was the wind just now, and you’ll wait a little time without speaking, you’ll hear it say both words very plain.’

Mr Willet was right. After listening for a few moments, they could clearly hear, above the roar and tumult out of doors, this shout repeated; and that with a shrillness and energy, which denoted that it came from some person in great distress or terror. They looked at each other, turned pale, and held their breath. No man stirred.

It was in this emergency that Mr Willet displayed something of that strength of mind and plenitude of mental resource, which rendered him the admiration of all his friends and neighbours. After looking at Messrs Parkes and Cobb for some time in silence, he clapped his two hands to his cheeks, and sent forth a roar which made the glasses dance and rafters ring—a long-sustained, discordant bellow, that rolled onward with the wind, and startling every echo, made the night a hundred times more boisterous—a deep, loud, dismal bray, that sounded like a human gong. Then, with every vein in his head and face swollen with the great exertion, and his countenance suffused with a lively purple, he drew a little nearer to the fire, and turning his back upon it, said with dignity: ‘If that’s any comfort to anybody, they’re welcome to it. If it an’t, I’m sorry for ’em. If either of you two gentlemen likes to go out and see what’s the matter, you can. I’m not curious, myself.’

While he spoke the cry drew nearer and nearer, footsteps passed the window, the latch of the door was raised, it opened, was violently shut again, and Solomon Daisy, with a lighted lantern in his hand, and the rain streaming from his disordered dress, dashed into the room.

A more complete picture of terror than the little man presented, it would be difficult to imagine. The perspiration stood in beads upon his face, his knees knocked together, his every limb trembled, the power of articulation was quite gone; and there he stood, panting for breath, gazing on them with such livid ashy looks, that they were infected with his fear, though ignorant of its occasion, and, reflecting his dismayed and horror-stricken visage, stared back again without venturing to question him; until old John Willet, in a fit of temporary insanity, made a dive at his cravat, and, seizing him by that portion of his dress, shook him to and fro until his very teeth appeared to rattle in his head.

‘Tell us what’s the matter, sir,’ said John, ‘or I’ll kill you. Tell us what’s the matter, sir, or in another second I’ll have your head under the biler. How dare you look like that? Is anybody a following of you? What do you mean? Say something, or I’ll be the death of you, I will.’

Mr Willet, in his frenzy, was so near keeping his word to the very letter (Solomon Daisy’s eyes already beginning to roll in an alarming manner, and certain guttural sounds, as of a choking man, to issue from his throat), that the two bystanders, recovering in some degree, plucked him off his victim by main force,