revolving, I suppose, like a polar bear under those trees on
the cliff," replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, "looking at what
an older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better) poet
called the wine-dark sea. It really has a sort of purple shade; look at
it."

Paynter looked; he saw the wine-dark sea and the fantastic trees that
fringed it, but he did not see the poet; the cloister was already empty
of its restless monk.

"Gone somewhere else," he said, with futility far from characteristic.
"He'll be back here presently. This is an interesting vigil, but a
vigil loses some of its intensity when you can't keep awake. Ah! Here's
Treherne; so we're all mustered, as the politician said when Mr. Colman
came late for dinner. No, the doctor's off again. How restless we all
are!" The poet had drawn near, his feet were falling soft on the grass,
and was gazing at them with a singular attentiveness.

"It will soon be over," he said.

"What?" snapped Ashe very abruptly.

"The night, of course," replied Treherne in a motionless manner. "The
darkest hour has passed."

"Didn't some other minor poet remark," inquired Paynter flippantly,
"that the darkest hour before the dawn--? My God, what was that? It was
like a scream."

"It was a scream," replied the poet. "The scream of a peacock."

Ashe stood up, his strong pale face against his red hair, and said
furiously: "What the devil do you mean?"

"Oh, perfectly natural causes, as Dr. Brown would say," replied
Treherne. "Didn't the Squire tell us the trees had a shrill note of
their own when the wind blew? The wind's beating up again from the sea;
I shouldn't wonder if there was a storm before dawn."

Dawn indeed came gradually with a growing noise of wind, and the purple
sea began to boil about the dark volcanic cliffs. The first change in
the sky showed itself only in the shapes of the wood and the single
stems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against a
glimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees.
In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine
and even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving
as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of
dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams he
toiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales, each filled with the same
stress and noise of sea and sea wind; and above and outside all ot