“I had come along the road very quietly,” said she, “for my feet were lightly shod, and the moonlight was too bright for me to make a misstep.  But as I cleared the trees and came into the open place where the house stands I stumbled with surprise at seeing a figure crouching on the doorstep I had anticipated finding as empty as the road.  It was an old man’s figure, and as I paused in my embarrassment he slowly and with great feebleness rose to his feet and began to grope about for the door.  As he did so, I heard a sharp tinkling sound, as of something metallic falling on the doorstone, and, taking a quick step forward, I looked over his shoulder and espied in the moonlight at his feet a dagger so like the one I had lately handled in Mrs. Webb’s yard that I was overwhelmed with astonishment, and surveyed the aged and feeble form of the man who had dropped it with a sensation difficult to describe.  The next moment he was stooping for the weapon, with a startled air that has impressed itself distinctly upon my memory, and when, after many feeble attempts, he succeeded in grasping it, he vanished into the house so suddenly that I could not be sure whether or not he had seen me standing there.

“All this was more than surprising to me, for I had never thought of associating an old man with this crime.  Indeed, I was so astonished to find him in possession of this weapon that I forgot all about my errand and only wondered how I could see and know more.  Fearing detection, I slid in amongst the bushes and soon found myself under one of the windows.  The shade was down and I was about to push it aside when I heard someone moving about inside and stopped.  But I could not restrain my curiosity, so pulling a hairpin from my hair, I worked a little hole in the shade and through this I looked into a room brightly illumined by the moon which shone in through an adjoining window.  And what did I see there?” Her eye turned on Frederick.  His right hand had stolen toward his left, but it paused under her look and remained motionless.  “Only an old man sitting at a table and—­” Why did she pause, and why did she cover up that pause with a wholly inconsequential sentence?  Perhaps Frederick could have told, Frederick, whose hand had now fallen at his side.  But Frederick volunteered nothing, and no one, not even Sweetwater, guessed all that lay beyond that and which was left hovering in the air to be finished—–­when?  Alas! had she not set the day and the hour?

What she did say was in seeming explanation of her previous sentence.  “It was not the same old man I had seen on the doorstep, and while I was looking at him I became aware of someone leaving the house and passing me on the road up-hill.  Of course this ended my interest in what went on within, and turning as quickly as I could I hurried into the road and followed the shadow I could just perceive disappearing in the woods above me.  I was bound, gentlemen, as you see, to follow out my adventure to the end.