Nevertheless, that night, after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the open window of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and ear.  It was a fine moonlit night.  Two pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their spiced breath in the windows.  For there was no frivolity of vine or flower round Salomy Jane’s bower.  The clearing was too recent, the life too practical for vanities like these.  But the moon added a vague elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds, gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with merciful indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the gaunt scars of burnt vegetation before the door.  Even Salomy Jane was affected by it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of the pines.  Then she suddenly sat upright.

Her quick ear had caught a faint “click, click,” in the direction of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to determine that it was the ring of a horse’s shoe on flinty ground; her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot where the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile from where she sat, and within the clearing.  It was no errant “stock,” for the foot was shod with iron; it was a mounted trespasser by night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.

She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than shelter, and passed out of the door.  A sudden impulse made her seize her father’s shotgun from the corner where it stood,—­not that she feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse.  She made directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines as long as she could.  At the fringe she halted; whoever was there must pass her before reaching the house.

Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature.  Everything was deadly still—­even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns, and then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight.  It was the horse-thief—­the man she had kissed!

For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect and stirred her temperate blood.  The news they had told her was not true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost!  He looked as white and spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she saw him last.  He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly to meet her.  But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her.  And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling around—­only this unhappy fugitive.  A momentary color came into her cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of sauciness in her voice that she said:—­