At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the front.  This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them, I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.

The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere of starry sky.  As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal, though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for silence.  Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition—­old as man, for aught I know—­of how the hooting of an owl betokens death.  And then I laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my father’s roof within the compass of the night.

Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.  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.