.

That was the meaning, then, of those silences that had come between
them? He had been thinking, remembering, careful lest he should forget
a single scruple of the whole ludicrous affair. She shuddered,
remembering how she had fairly flung herself into his arms.

On that she brooded, after starting the little fire. It was not that
she was cold, but the fire, at least, in the heart of the black night,
was a friend incapable of human treachery. She had not been there long
when the tall bay, Wilbur's horse, stiffened, raised his head, arched
his tail, and then whinnied.

She started to her feet, stirred by a thousand fears, and heard, far
away, an answering neigh. At once all thought of shame and of Pierre
le Rouge vanished from her mind, for she remembered the man who had
followed her up the valley of the Old Crow. Perhaps he was coming now
out of the night; perhaps she would even see him.

And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows
in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint
smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the
smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails
which grows at length to a thunder.

All the while his heart beats faster and faster and rocks with the sway
of the approaching engine; so the heart of Mary Brown beat, though she
could not see, but only felt the coming of the stranger.

The only sign she saw was in the horses, which showed an increasing
uneasiness. Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay,
and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at the
tethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if they
feared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe--some vast
and preternatural change--some forest fire which came galloping faster
than even their fleet limbs could carry them.

Yet all beyond the pale of her campfire's light was silence, utter and
complete silence. It seemed as if a veritable muscular energy went
into the intensity of her listening, but not a sound reached her except
a faint whispering of the wind in the dark trees above her.

But at last she knew that the thing was upon her. The horses ceased
their prancing and stared in a fixed direction through the thicket of
shrubbery; the very wind grew hushed above her; she could feel the new
presence as one feels the silence when a door closes and shuts away the
sound of