sanctorum,—­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 gazing at the glow with meditative eyes, now diverted to industriously licking his sides.  As the long cane of the waking Indian threw off the summit of the ashes and touched up the embers to a more cordial warmth, the dog, always relishing companionship, repaired to the side of the divan, and the young Cherokee, pushing him off, noticed the dripping sides of the animal where the snow had melted on the hair.

“It must be raining,” he said to himself, all unaware that aught had entered except the dog, coming and going after the manner of his restless kind.  The incident recurred no more to his mind save for a vague recollection of his error when he perceived in the morning that it was snow that had fallen in the night and not rain.