It was a very dark night. The garden gate creaked behind him as though accusing him of his wicked act; the darkness was so thick that you had to push against it as though it were a wall.

At first he ran, then the whole world seemed to run after him, trees, houses and all, so he stopped and walked slowly. The world seemed gigantic; he was not as yet conscious of fear, but only suspicious of the presence of that gigantic policeman taking step with him, inch by inch, flicking his dark lantern, now here, now there, rising like a Jack-in-the-box suddenly above the trees and peering down upon him.

Then, when for the moment he left the houses behind him and began to walk up Green Lane towards the cathedral, his heart failed him. How horrible the trees were! All shapes and sizes; towers of castles, masts of ships, animals, pigs and hens and lions blowing a little in the night breezes, becking and bowing above him, holding out horrible, long, skinny fingers towards him, sometimes closing in upon him, then moving, fan-wise, out again. In fact, he was now completely miserable. With the dreadful finality of childhood he saw himself as condemned for life. By this time Hamlet, having discovered his absence, had barked the house awake. Already, perhaps, with lanterns they had started to search for him. The awful moment of discovery would come. Even Uncle Samuel would abandon him; nobody would ever be kind to him again.

At this point it was all that he could do to keep back the tears. His teeth were chattering, he had a crick in his back, he was very cold, the heel of one shoe rubbed his foot. And he was frightened! Bet your life but he was frightened! He hadn’t known that it would be like this, so silent and yet so full of sound, so dark and yet so light and alive with strange quivering lights, so cold and yet so warm with an odd, pressing heat! There were no lamps lit in the town below him (all lights out at ten o’clock in the Polchester of thirty years ago), and the cathedral loomed up before him a heavy black mass, threatening to fall upon him like the mountain in the Bible. Now the trees were coming to an end—here was a house and there another. A light in one window, but, for the rest, the houses quite dead like coffins. He came into Bodger Street, past the funny old-fashioned turnstile that led into Canon’s Yard over the cobble-stones of that ancient square, through the turnstile at the other end and into the Precincts. He was there! Shivering and frightened, but there! He had kept his word.

As he crossed the grass a figure moved forward from the shadow of the cathedral and came to meet him. It was Tommy Winchester. It immensely cheered Jeremy to see him; it also cheered him to see that if he was frightened Tommy was a great deal more so. Tommy’s teeth were chattering so that he could scarcely speak, but he managed to say that it was beastly cold, and that he had upset a jug of water getting out of his bedroom, and that a dog had barked at him all the way along the Precincts, and that he was sure his father would beat him. They were joined a moment later by another shivering mortal, Bartlett. A more unhappy trio never met together in the world’s history. They were too miserable for conversation, but simply stood huddled together under the great buttress by the west door and waited for the clock to strike.

The only thing that Bartlett said was: “I bet Sampson doesn’t come!” At that Jeremy’s heart gave a triumphant leap. How splendid it would be if the Dean’s Ernest funked it! Of course he would funk it, and would have some long story about his door being closed or having a headache, some lie or other!

Nevertheless, they strained their eyes across the dark wavering lake of the Precincts watching for him.

“I’m so cold,” Tommy said through his chattering teeth. Then suddenly, as though struck by a gun: “I’m going to sneeze!”

And he did sneeze, an awful shattering, devastating sound with which the cathedral, and indeed the whole town, seemed to shake. That was an awful moment. The boys stood, holding their breath, waiting for all the black houses to open their doors and all the townsmen to turn out in their nightshirts with lanterns (just as they do in the Meistersinger, although that, of course, the boys did not know) crying: “Who’s that who sneezed? Where did the sneeze come from? What was that sneeze?”

Nothing happened save that, the silence was more awful than before. Then there was a kind of whirring noise above their heads, a moment’s pause, and the great cathedral clock began to strike midnight.

“Now,” said Bartlett, “we’ve got to walk or run round the cathedral twice.”

He was off, and Tommy and Jeremy after him.

Jeremy was a good runner, but this was like no race that he had ever engaged in before. As he ran the notes boomed out above his head and the high shadow of the great building seemed to catch his feet and hold him. He could not see, and, as before, when he ran the rest of the world seemed to run with him, so that he was always pausing to hear whether anyone were moving with him or no.

Then quite suddenly he was alone, and frightened as he had never in his life been before; no, not when the horrible sea captain had woken him in the middle of the night, not when he thought that God had killed Hamlet, not when he had first been tossed in a blanket at Thompson’s, not when he had first played second-half in a real game and had to lie down and let ten boys kick the ball from under him!

His body was turned to water. He could not move. The shadows were so vast around him, the ground wavered beneath his feet, the trees on the slopes below the cathedral all nodded as though they knew that terrible things would soon happen to him—and there was no sound anywhere. What he wanted was to creep close to the cathedral, clutch the stone walls, and stay there. That was what he nearly did, and if he had done it he would have been there, I believe, until this very day. Then he remembered the Dean’s Ernest who had been too frightened to come, he remembered that he had been “dared” to run round the cathedral twice, and that he had only as yet run half round it once. His stockings were down over his ankles, both his boots now hurt him, he had lost his cap; he summoned all the pluck that there was in his soul and body combined and ran on.

When he had finished his first round and was back by the west door again, there was no sign of the other two boys. He paused desperately for breath; then, as though pursued by all the evil spirits of the night, started again. This time it did not seem so long. He shut his ears to all possible sound, refused to think, and the physical pain of the stitch in his side and his two rubbed heels kept him from grosser fear. Then, just as he completed the second round, the most awful thing happened. A figure, an enormous figure it seemed to poor Jeremy, rose out of the ground, a figure with flapping wings; a great light was flashed in the air; a strange, high voice screamed aloud. The figure moved towards him. That was enough for his courage. As though death itself were behind him, he took to his heels, tore across the grass, plunged through the stile into Parson’s Yard.

The little shadow had been like a curve of wind on the grass. High in the air rose the cry:

“A windy night and all clear! A windy night and all clear!” and the night-watchman, his thoughts upon the toasted cheese that would in another half-hour be his reward, pressed round the corner of the cathedral.