Nature's grim orchestra was playing its world-old piece with a compass which ranged from the deep diapason of the thundering surge to the thin shriek of the scattered shingle and the keen piping of frightened sea birds.
Once for an instant I opened the lattice window, but a gust of wind and rain came blustering through, bearing with it a great sheet of seaweed, which flapped down upon the table.

It was all I could do to close it again with a thrust of my shoulder in the face of the blast.
My sister and father had retired to their rooms, but my thoughts were too active for sleep, so I continued to sit and to smoke by the smouldering fire.
What was going on in the Hall now, I wondered?
What did Gabriel think of the storm, and how did it affect the old man who wandered about in the night?
Did he welcome these dread forces of Nature as being of the same order of things as his own tumultuous thoughts?
It was only two days now from the date which I had been assured was to mark a crisis in his fortunes.

Would he regard this sudden tempest as being in any way connected with the mysterious fate which threatened him?
Over all these things and many more I pondered as I sat by the glowing embers until they died gradually out, and the chill night air warned me that it was time to retire.
I may have slept a couple of hours when I was awakened by some one tugging furiously at my shoulder.

Sitting up in bed, I saw by the dim light that my father was standing half-clad by my bedside, and that it was his grasp which I felt on my night-shirt.
"Get up, Jack, get up!" he was crying excitedly.

"There's a great ship ashore in the bay, and the poor folk will all be drowned.