Perhaps the Captain had gone away.

For three days he had seen and heard nothing of him at all.
That was a night of rain--rain that slashed and whipped the house as though it would batter it to the ground.

The rain would come with a wild fury upon the panes, trembling with its excited anger, would crash against the glass, then fall back and hang waiting for a further attack; next the results of the first attack would slip and slide like the crawling of a thousand snakes, then fall and drop slowly and heavily as though every drop were foretelling some awful peril.

Jeremy lay and listened; but he resolved that to-night he would not be frightened, would not think of the Captain.
He said the Lord's Prayer five times, then counted sheep jumping over the gate, a safe solution for sleepless hours.

He saw the sheep--first one a very fat one, then one a very thin one; but the gate stood at the bottom of a little hill, so that it was very difficult for the poor creatures, who jumped and slipped back on the incline.