Peter, thrust back from the door through which through which his master had gone, listened vainly for the sound of returning footsteps in the beat of rain and the crash of thunder outside.

A strange thing had burned itself into his soul, a thing that made his flesh quiver and set hot fires running in his blood.

As a dog sometimes senses the stealthy approach of death, so he began to sense the tragedy of this night that had brought with it not only a chaos of blackness and storm, but an anguish which roused an answering whimper in his throat as he turned toward Nada.
She was crumpled with her head in her arms, where she had flung herself with Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was sobbing like a child with its heart broken.

And beside her knelt the old gray Missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair with his thin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the wind and rain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the accompaniment of ghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the tree-tops outside.
Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were with the man who had gone.

In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkins who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and who was pounding at the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with its menace and fear.