Which Tells How Barnabas Heard the Ticking of a Clock

It was a dark night, the moon obscured as yet by a wrack of flying
cloud, for a wind was abroad, a rising wind that blew in fitful gusts;
a boisterous, blustering, bullying wind that met the traveller at
sudden corners to choke and buffet him and so was gone, roaring away
among roofs and chimneys, rattling windows and lattices,
extinguishing flickering lamps, and filling the dark with stir and
tumult.

But Barnabas strode on heedless and deaf to it all. Headlong he went,
his cloak fluttering, his head stooped low, hearing nothing, seeing
nothing, taking no thought of time or direction, or of his ruined
career, since none of these were in his mind, but only the words of
Cleone's letter.

And slowly a great anger came upon him with a cold and bitter scorn
of her that cast out sorrow; thus, as he went, he laughed suddenly,
--a shrill laugh that rose above the howl of the wind, that grew
even wilder and louder until he was forced to stop and lean against
an iron railing close by.

"An Amateur Gentleman!" he gasped, "An Amateur Gentleman! Oh, fool!
fool!" And once again the fierce laughter shook him in its grip and,
passing, left him weak and breathless.

Through some rift in the clouds, the moon cast a fugitive beam and
thus he found himself looking down into a deep and narrow area where
a flight of damp, stone steps led down to a gloomy door; and beside
the door was a window, and the window was open.