I knew quite well that I should not be able to draw back the heavy bolts, but, while I looked at them helplessly, half-deafened by the incessant knocking of the great iron knocker on the oak door, old Neil came down the stairs muttering, as was his way.
"First I thought it was a ghost," he said, "but no ghost ever knocked like that.

God send he brings good news, whoever he is! Glory be to God, he's in a divil of a hurry to get in." I held my candle for him to see, and the knocking ceased while he undid the bolts.

Dido was whining and running up and down impeding him, and I heard him say that he'd kick her if it wasn't that she was already afflicted with blindness, the creature, and was Master Luke's dog.

Now that the silence had come we heard the rain driven in torrents against the fanlight above the hall door.
At the moment the bolt fell I glanced behind me.

My grandfather and grandmother had come out into the hall: his arm was about her with a protecting tenderness.