The sweep of his visions was wide, ranging from that redoubtable county lady, Harriet Cowden _nee_ Verity--first cousin of his father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host--in her violet-ink hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan,--from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey, long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains.

Days on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river at Oxford, and still earlier days in the Rectory nursery at home; bringing with them sense of small bitter sorrows, small glorious triumphs, of laughter and uproarious fun, of sentimental passages at balls, picnics, garden parties, too, with charmingly pretty maidens who, in all probability, he would never clap eyes on again--all these, and impressions even more illusive and fugitive, playing hide-and-seek among the mazelike convolutions of his all too active brain.
Then, on a sudden, he started up in bed, aware of external noise and movement which brought him instantly, almost painfully, broad awake.
For a quite appreciable length of time, while he sat upright in the warm darkness, Tom failed either to locate the noise which had thus roused him, or to interpret its meaning.

It appeared to him to start at the river foreshore, pass across the garden, into and through the ground-floor suite of rooms and corridor which Sir Charles had indicated as reserved to his particular use .-- What on earth could it be?
What did it remind him of ?--Why, surely--with a start of incredulous recognition--the sound of hoofs, though strangely confused and muffled, such as a mob of scared, over-driven horses might make, floundering fetlock deep in loose sand.
Alive with curiosity he sprang out of bed, groped his way across to the window and, putting up the blind, leaned out.
A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves broke in soft flash and sparkle.

Its light was not strong enough to quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky.

Tom could distinguish the black mass of the great ilex trees on the right.
Could see the whole extent of the lawn, the two sentinel cannon and pyramid of ammunition set on the terrace along the top of the sea-wall.
And nothing moved there, nothing whatever.