Yet, still more than he looked at the girl, he, also, stared into the distance.

He, also, was waiting! It was the deep suspense of Cumberland which made him so silently alert.
He was as intensely alive as the receiver of a wireless apparatus; he gathered information from the empty air.
So that Byrne was hardly surprised, when, in the midst of that grim silence, the old man raised a rigid forefinger of warning.

Kate and Daniels stiffened in their chairs and Byrne felt his flesh creep.

Of course it was nothing.

The wind, which had shaken the house with several strong gusts before dinner, had now grown stronger and blew with steadily increasing violence; perhaps the sad old man had been attracted by the mournful chorus and imagined some sound he knew within it.
But now once more the finger was raised, the arm extended, shaking violently, and Joe Cumberland turned upon them a glance which flashed with a delirious and unhealthy joy.
"Listen!" he cried.