Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/59

 faintly hoping yet not venturing to expect that out of this circumstance he might gain his ends.

At last the squall burst—with a sudden glare of white lightning and a thunderclap like a frigate's broadside; and it was from the eastward that the wind came, a mighty gust too violent to last. Lachlan, peering upward from the shadowy courtyard, saw that the curtains of the lighted window above him were blowing outward in the breeze that swept through the other window into the room. From his post in the courtyard he had not been able to see the little white ball on the sill; but he knew that it was there no longer. He had seen it quiver in the light airs before the squall came. Beyond a doubt that first gust blowing through the room from the east had blown it outward from the window sill.

The next task was to find it, and in the blackness that the squall clouds made this was no easy matter. Yet he figured accurately that it would have dropped almost straight downward, and just as the first volley of rain began to fall he lit upon it in the grass. Stealthily, yet swiftly, he made his way out of the black courtyard through the gate opening on the rear alley and hurried homeward through the rain to examine his prize.

It was far better than he had dared hope for. The white ball was a bit of white cloth tightly rolled and bound with a light cord. Within the ball was a closely folded square of paper. Eagerly he spread this