ugh the silence.
But there was nothing to see save the black forms of houses and the pear
trees in Pollard's yard, shapeless, sinister shadows something darker
than the emptiness against which they stood; no sound save his horse's
breathing, the faint creak of his own saddle leather, the low jingle of
bridle and spur chain.

"Almost too still to be true," he told himself. "But," with a grim
tightening of his lips, "too infernally dark for a man to pick me off
with a shotgun if he wanted to!"

Fifty yards from Pollard's front gate he stopped his horse, swung down
noiselessly from the saddle and tied Comet to a tree standing at the
edge of the road; his jingling spurs he removed to hang them over the
horn of his saddle. Then he went forward on foot, walking guardedly, his
tread upon the grass making no sound to reach his own ears, and came to
Pollard's gate.

It was so dark under the pear trees that the obscurity was without
detail; he must guess rather than know where the tree trunks were; it
was hard to judge if they were ten feet or fifty feet from him. There
might be no one here to keep tryst with him, while on the other hand a
dozen men might be waiting.

For perhaps two or three minutes he waited, standing motionless at the
gate. No faint noise came to him, no hint of a shadow stirring among
those other shadows as motionless as they were formless. The night
seemed not to breathe, no sound even of rustling branches coming to his
ears from the old pear trees.

"It's twelve o'clock, and after," he thought. "If she's coming she ought
to be here now."

Still he waited. And then when he knew it must be ten or fifteen minutes
after the time Winifred had set, and remembering that she said
specifically "under the pear trees," he moved forward suddenly, jerked
the gate open and stood in Pollard's yard.

The little noise of the gate whining upon its worn hinges sounded
unnaturally loud. His footfall upon the warped board walk which led to
the front door snapped through the silence like a pistol shot.

"If there's anybody laying for me here he knows now that I've come," he
told himself. And with no hesitation now, yet with no lessening of his
watchfulness, he came on swiftly until he stood under the pear trees and
within ten feet of the front porch.

It was still about him, intensely still, and black-dark. He stood
leaning forward a little, peering into the darkness, listening for a
sound, any sound. He knew that it