Algernon Blackwood

“ It was quite plain that strangers had broken into the cottage, attracted by its extreme loneliness, and were at this very moment in larder or kitchen at the end of the passage, arranging their booty, perhaps just making ready to depart. And he remembered then that he had smelt flowers and grass and earth as he came down the staircase⁠—sign that a door or window had been opened below⁠—and that the air in the hall was uncommonly fresh and sweet. “There are two of them,” Jones reflected, in this awkward moment of greatness which had been thrust upon him, “and I have no weapon, not even a poker!” ”

“ But nothing banishes sleep so effectively as anger. Jones, disgruntled and annoyed, sat up in bed at two o’clock in the morning, in the little Sussex cottage where he was spending the weekend with a married cousin of slight acquaintance, and remembered next that even in his sleep there was something that had bothered him. ”

“ The night before⁠—it seemed so long ago, so far away⁠—a plan had been arranged: a bicycling trip across the Downs, himself as leader; the children had been sent early to bed on purpose, and he had fallen asleep, thinking hard about the route, yet uncertain of It. He dared not fail, for the children thought him marvellous. ”