by which Brunow must come, and listening with
my soul in my ears for the first distant noise of hoof-beats. The sun
had gone down in a bank of threatening cloud, and before the moon rose
the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side
had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an
astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay
in a hot stillness. The light of the moon was in the sky long before she
rose above the mountains, and I could see that the wild work up there
was growing wilder every minute. The wind was descending, too, from its
lofty altitude, and I could hear it now roaring and now muttering in the
gullies like a discontented giant.

In the course of that waiting I was often mistaken in the sound of
distant hoofs. I was tricked at least a thousand times. Now it was the
wind in the trees, now it was a gurgle in the river, now it was a murmur
of life in the village, now it was the movement of a goat, a cow, or a
horse upon the hill-side. But at last I caught the real sound, and knew
it at once from all the noises which had till then deceived my fancy.
The rider came along at a good round pace, and in a while I heard Brunow
singing--a signal to me, no doubt. I called aloud "Hello! that you,
Brunow?" and he answered with a whoop, expressive of high spirits. There
was light enough to see me as he passed without drawing rein.

"I've a message from the governor to the officer in charge," he shouted.
"Meet you at the inn by-and-by." There was no reason why we should have
met at all, but the sense of precaution which touched me in his words
allayed my anxiety a little. If by any very improbable chance anybody
within hearing had understood him, the pretence justified itself. It
could do no harm, and it was worth while to look natural. I betook
myself at once to the point we had agreed upon for a meeting-place, and
waited there in a renewed suspense, to which all the wretchedness of
waiting I had hitherto known seemed as nothing. Suddenly the wind took
me with a great gust, which almost carried me off my feet; a clap of
thunder directly overhead seemed actually simultaneous with a piercing
glare of lightning, and the rain came down in torrents. After the flash
of lightning everything looked so impenetrably black and formless that I
might as well have stared about me with my eyes shut, but a second
flash showed me the gate of the fortress quiverin