Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
become fiercely debatable.

It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
black beneath my window.

It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.

"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of
how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.

At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.

Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
chance of interruption.

I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
task to do and I w