"Get inside! get inside!" cried Moon hilariously, with the air
of one shooing a company of cats. "Come, come, be quick about it!
Didn't I tell you I wanted to talk to Inglewood?"
How they were all really driven into the house again it would
have been difficult afterwards to say. They had reached the point
of being exhausted with incongruities, as people at a farce
are ill with laughing, and the brisk growth of the storm among
the trees seemed like a final gesture of things in general.
Inglewood lingered behind them, saying with a certain amicable
exasperation, "I say, do you really want to speak to me?"
"I do," said Michael, "very much."
Night had come as it generally does, quicker than the twilight had seemed
to promise. While the human eye still felt the sky as light gray, a very
large and lustrous moon appearing abruptly above a bulk of roofs and trees,
proved by contrast that the sky was already a very dark gray indeed.
A drift of barren leaves across the lawn, a drift of riven clouds across
the sky, seemed to be lifted on the same strong and yet laborious wind.
"Arthur," said Michael, "I began with an intuition; but now I am sure.
You and I are going to defend this friend of yours before the blessed Court
of Beacon, and to clear him too--clear him of both crime and lunacy.
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