One small coal-oil lamp was the light of the house.  When Ann had closed doors and windows she took it up and went into the bedroom.  Neither room was small; there was a shadowy part round their edges which the lamp did not brighten.  In the dimmer part of this inner room was a bed, on which a fair young girl was sleeping.

A curious thing now occurred.  Ann, placing herself between the lamp and the window, deliberately went through a pantomime of putting herself to bed.  She took care that the shadow of the brushing of her hair should be seen upon the window-curtain.  She measured the distance, and threw her silhouette clearly upon it while she took off one or two of her outer garments.  Her face had resolution and nervous eagerness written in it, but there was nothing of inward disquiet there; she was wholly satisfied in her own mind as to what she was doing.  It was not a very profound mind, perhaps, but it was like a weapon burnished by constant and proper use.

She removed her shadow from the window-curtain when she removed her lamp to the bedside.  She employed herself there for a minute or two in putting on the clothes she had taken off, and in tightly fastening up the hair that she had loosened; then she put out the lamp and got into bed.  The wooden bedstead creaked, and rubbed against the side of the house as she turned herself upon it.  The creaking and rubbing could be heard on the other side of the wall.

There was a man walking like a sentry outside who did hear.  It was Bart Toyner, the constable.

After he heard the bed creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly round the house in silence and darkness.  Then, as he passed the side where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore, repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a woman’s breast.

After a while Toyner retreated with noiseless steps, standing still when he had moved away about fifty paces, looking at the house again with careful, suspicious eyes; then, as if satisfied, he slid back the iron shade that covered his lantern and, lighting his own steps, he walked away.

He had moved so quietly that the girl who lay upon the bed did not hear him.  She did not, in fact, know for certain whether he had been there or not, much less that he had gone, so that she toilsomely kept up the pretence of that gentle snore for half an hour or more.  It was very tiresome.  Her bright black eyes were wide open as she lay performing this exercise.  Her face never lost its look of strong resolution.  At length, true to her acting, she moved her head sleepily, sighed heavily, and relapsed into silent breathing as a sleeper might.  It was the acting of a true artist.

Half an hour more of silence upon her bed, and she crept off noiselessly; she lifted the corner of the window-curtain and looked out.  There was not a light to be seen in any of the houses within sight, there was not a sound to be heard except the foam at the foot of the falls, the lapping of the nearer river, and the voice of a myriad crickets in the grass.  She opened the window silently.