igher, he
stepped out on the bartizan, and so round the tower to the roof. There
he stood for a moment to look about him.

It was a moonlit night, so far as the clouds, blown in huge and almost
continuous masses over the heavens, would permit the light of the moon
to emerge. The roaring of the sea came like a low rolling mist across
the flats. The air gloomed and darkened and lightened again around him,
as the folds of the cloud-blanket overhead were torn, or dropped
trailing, or gathered again in the arms of the hurrying wind. As he
stood, it seemed suddenly to change, and take a touch of south in its
blowing. The same instant came to his ear a loud wail: it was the
ghost-music! There was in it the cry of a discord, mingling with a wild
rolling change of harmonies. He stood "like one forbid," and listened
with all his power. It came again, and again, and was more continuous
than he had ever heard it before. Here was now a chance indeed of
tracing it home! As a gaze-hound with his eyes, as a sleuth-hound with
his nose, he stood ready to start hunting with his listing listening
ear. The seeming approach and recession of the sounds might be
occasioned by changes in their strength, not by any change of position!

"It must come from somewhere on the roof!" he said, and setting down
the pail he had brought, he got on his hands and knees, first to escape
the wind in his ears, and next to diminish its hold on his person. Over
roof after roof he crept like a cat, stopping to listen every time a
new gush of the sound came, then starting afresh in the search for its
source. Upon a great gathering of roofs like these, erected at various
times on various levels, and with all kinds of architectural
accommodations of one part to another, sound would be variously
deflected, and as difficult to trace as inside the house! Careless of
cold or danger, he persisted, creeping up, creeping down, over flat
leads, over sloping slates, over great roofing stones, along low
parapets, and round ticklish corners--following the sound ever, as a
cat a flitting unconscious bird: when it ceased, he would keep slowly
on in the direction last chosen. Sometimes, when the moon was more
profoundly obscured, he would have to stop altogether, unable to get a
peep of his way.

On one such occasion, when it was nearly pitch-dark, and the sound had
for some time ceased, he was crouching upon a high-pitched roof of
great slabs, his fingers clutched around the