On the eventful morning, the miller’s erratic grandson, awaking early, he knew not why, had sought to utilize the occurrence by robbing an owl’s nest in the hollow of a tree beside the mill. The day had not yet dawned, and he hoped that one or the other of the great birds would be away on its nocturnal foragings, so that he might the more easily secure the owlet, which he had long wanted for a pet. It was very still, ’Gustus Tom said. The frogs by the water had ceased their croaking; the katydids were silenced long ago; he heard only the surging monotone of the gleaming cascade falling over the natural dam. He had climbed the tree to the lower limbs, and had perched on one of them to rest for a moment, when there broke upon the air the sound of the galloping of a horse far away, approaching at a tremendous rate of speed. Presently he came into view, his head stretched forward, his coat flecked with foam, his rider plying both heel and whip. This rider was Peter Rood, whom ’Gustus Tom knew well, as he often came to the mill. He dismounted hastily, close to the water-side. He walked uncertainly, even pausing sometimes to steady himself by holding to the supports of the old mill. He was evidently very drunk, and thus it appeared to ’Gustus Tom the less surprising that he should drag two or three fence rails stranded on the margin of the river,—which was high and full of floating rubbish,—and laboriously place them in a position to cumber the wheel; an empty barrel, too, he found and put to this use, some poles, drift-wood. He paused after a careful survey of his work, and held up his head, looking away toward the east, as if he were listening. It seemed to ’Gustus Tom, all veiled by the dew-tipped chestnut leaves, that Rood was strangely intent of purpose for a drunken man. He heard, long before the boy did, some monition of approach in the distance, for he caught eagerly at his horse’s bridle. Yet he was drunk enough to find difficulty in mounting. As the animal swerved, he was obliged to grasp the stirrup with one hand in order to steady it, so that he could put his foot in it; then he flung his right leg over the saddle, and away he went along the grassy margin of the road,—noiseless, swift, dark, like some black shadow, some noxious exhalation of the night.