Then followed a period of long and intensely anxious waiting.
Harry thought that if the night would only lighten they could get a clean sweep of the lawn and drive away the mountaineers, but it grew darker instead and the wind rose.

He heard the boughs of the clipped pines rustle as they were whipped together, and the cold drops lashed him in the face.

He had become soaking wet, lying on the floor of the portico, but he did not notice it.
Harry saw far to his left a single dim light in the dip beyond the forest, and he knew that it shone through a window in one of the houses of Pendleton.
It seemed amazing that so bitter a combat should be going on here, while the people slept peacefully in the town below.

But there was not one chance in a thousand that they would hear of the battle on such a night.

Then an idea came to him, and creeping to his father he made his proposition.