Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious
edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the
morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife,
to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared
to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than her
momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up
longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises
that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking
towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she
used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim
tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this
meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary
point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before
its beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of a
house on the hill-side. The house had been empty when she was last at
home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now.
Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was
watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at
length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and
then it passed through violet to red.
Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up
in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort,
sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in
Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and
nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct
result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's
changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal
sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing
to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her
father bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and
mother passed her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver.
Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,
said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me."
Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes.
Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of
Miss Melbury's coverlet.
"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side," said
Grace.