ong as it got him out of the house."

Almost at the same moment lights sprang up inside the darkened house,
turning the two glass doors into the garden into gates of beaten gold.
The golden gates were burst open, and the enormous Smith, who had
sat like a clumsy statue for so many hours, came flying and turning
cart-wheels down the lawn and shouting, "Acquitted! acquitted!"
Echoing the cry, Michael scampered across the lawn to Rosamund and
wildly swung her into a few steps of what was supposed to be a waltz.
But the company knew Innocent and Michael by this time,
and their extravagances were gaily taken for granted; it was far
more extraordinary that Arthur Inglewood walked straight up to Diana
and kissed her as if it had been his sister's birthday. Even Dr. Pym,
though he refrained from dancing, looked on with real benevolence;
for indeed the whole of the absurd revelation had disturbed him
less than the others; he half supposed that such irresponsible
tribunals and insane discussions were part of the mediaeval mummeries
of the Old Land.

While the tempest tore the sky as with trumpets, window after window was
lighted up in the house within; and before the company, broken with laughter
and the buffeting of the wind, had groped their way to the house again,
they saw that the great apish figure of Innocent Smith had clambered
out of his own attic window, and roaring again and again, "Beacon House!"
whirled round his head a huge log or trunk from the wood fire below,
of which the river of crimson flame and purple smoke drove out on
the deafening air.

He was evident enough to have been seen from three counties;
but when the wind died down, and the party, at the top of
their evening's merriment, looked again for Mary and for him,
they were not to be found.

The End

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton

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