an opening so
limited that it might barely suffice to admit a man's body, creeping
prone upon the earth, and so whelmed in night that it seemed to give a
new and adequate interpretation of the idea of darkness. Could he hope,
all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the
way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this
high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk
within instead of the object of this search?

At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of
anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast. His blood throbbed
in his temples. He dropped upon his knees--a sinuous, supple motion, a
vague rustle, and he had passed into the unimagined dark precincts
beyond the aperture.

Absolute quietude now reigned in the "holy cabin." The darkness filled
it with a solemnity and awe that made a compact with silence and
accounted the slightest sound, the softest stir, as a sacrilege.

When an owl--a tiny thing, the familiar little "wahuhu" of the
Cherokees--flitted down with its noiseless wings from out the sky and
sat, a mere tuft of feathers and big round eyes, on one of the eaves,
its shrill cry and convulsive chatter smote the night with a sudden
affright--all the breathless listening spaces of the "beloved square"
seemed to shiver at the sound, and the keen sleety lines of snow were
tremulously vibrant with it as the flakes came slanting down once more
from the north.

For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness
of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his
cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick,
agitated respiration. The little "wahuhu," all startled by his sudden
exit, rose with a sharp, cat-like mew from the eaves above his head,
dislodging a drift upon his hair, and fluttered away to a branch of a
tree, still gazing after him as he sped swiftly, joyously, to the winter
house where he lodged,--the descending snow would soon fill the trace of
his light footsteps and none be the wiser.

All danger of discovery, however, was not over-past. One of the braves
in the winter house experienced a vague intimation of an entrance into
the building, that peculiar chill which accompanies even to the warmest
fireside an intruder from the outer air. It seemed explained when he
roused himself and saw standing by the fire the French officer's dog,
now gazi