“Not yit,” sneered Bassett. “He’ll be kemin’ along arter a leetle, a-ridin’ of his mare, though he knows the rest o’ we-uns ’low ez ’tain’t safe ter hev hoss critters hitched round hyar. Ef all o’ we-uns done that, thar’d be enough hosses ter make ez much racket ez a comp’ny o’ cavalry, an’ them men would git a warnin’, and we-uns would never ketch ’em. Ye mark my words, Teck’ll be ’long d’rec’ly, a-ridin’ like some great captain.” As he spoke, a sudden, distant, undistinguished sound smote the air. “What’s that?” cried Bassett, half springing up, and resting upon one knee on the pile of hay. “Hush!” said one of the vigilantes near the moonlit window. He bent toward it, his eyes scanning the empty road, the silent woods, and lonely mountains with the melancholy splendor upon them. The others stood motionless, listening. The man at the window abruptly turned toward them his moonlit face, the sheen full in his dilated, excited eyes; he held up one significant finger, bespeaking attention. For the sound had come once more. XV. An interval of silence succeeded. The heavy, black shadows of the great trees hard by did not stir. The mute moonlight lay all down the vacant road, and rested unbroken upon the rude floor of the loft. The man at the square window stood motionless, his hand still uplifted, his illumined face questioning, intent. The only sound was the vague, lingering stir communicated through all the fibres of the hay when Bassett, half rising upon one knee in its midst, had shifted his weight. Suddenly an acorn from a chestnut-oak fell upon the roof, with a loud, imperative accent in the tense, expectant moment. It cracked upon the clapboards, that reverberated with the ready resonance of the void spaces of the interior, rebounded with a rattle, rolled deliberately down the eaves, and dropped thence to the ground. It was a slight thing, but if aught more significant had sounded in the interval, this trivial clamor had nullified it. The opportunity to continue to listen and identify the mysterious voice was lost, for one of the cows, below, had begun to low fitfully, and the rocks close at hand prolonged and reduplicated the lingering, melancholy note. A half-articulate curse, and here and there a long-drawn respiration, intimated that the breathless tension of expectation had given way. “’Twarn’t nuthin’ but a ow-_el_,” said one of the mountaineers, who had paused, as if petrified, in the middle of the floor, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head. He had a sedulously unimaginative aspect, as if determined to belittle the occurrence and denude it of consequence; and yet there was something in his tone that intimated a hope of contradiction. “Ow-_el_! Waal, mebbe ’twar,” ejaculated the man at the window perversely divining his desire.