Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that time,
and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor is it so
exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last house, and the
wind rushing up the river shook the house that night, like discharges
of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed
against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they
rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse.
Occasionally, the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could
not bear to go out into such a night; and when I set the doors open and
looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when
I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows
(opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of
such wind and rain), I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out,
and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and
that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being carried away
before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book
at eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul's, and all the many
church-clocks in the City--some leading, some accompanying, some
following--struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the wind;
and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it,
when I heard a footstep on the stair.