Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/63

Rh the sleepers turn in their beds and moan uneasily in their dreaming.

When the cry passed the windows of the east, it went to the windows of the west, and there it tapped softly with fingers of the wind and called three times:

‘Roderick! Roderick! Roderick!’

And at the first call Black Roderick turned in his bed and groaned. And at the second call he rose from his couch and said in his anger:

‘Who calleth, and will not let me rest?’

But at the third call he rose and went to the window in wonder, and seeing nothing he crept cold and trembling to his bed, muttering the half-forgotten prayers of his childhood; so long he lay in fear and amazement that he did not sleep till the lark hung singing in the heavens, and then he knew the night was gone and with it the ghosts that hide in the darkness. So he turned his face to the wall and slept. But the spirit of the little bride was speeding on her swift and terrible race to Paradise, and round her