summer midnight
So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference -- as indeed had happened nearly every day and night since I could remember . So that people called my father the Duke 's Private Devil , his Familiar Spirit , his Evil Genius . But I knew other of it -- and this night , of all nights in the year , I was to know better still . It was a summer midnight -- not like the one I told of when the story began , white with snow and glittering with the keen polish of frost . But a soft , still night , drowsy yet sleepless , with an itch of thunder tingling in the air -- and , indeed , already the pulsing , uncertain glow of sheet-lightning coming and going at long intervals along the south . I crouched and nestled in the hole in the wall where I had long ago hidden the hated red cloak , pulling my knees up uncomfortably to my chin . And great lumps of bone they were , knotted as if a smith had made them in the rough with a welding hammer and had forgotten to reduce them with the file afterwards .