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.
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