Exhaustion prevailed at last and overpowered vigilance. He had lain down upon the floor, pillowing his head on a saddle that had been flung there, intending merely to rest; but he was soon asleep, and the sun swung vertically above the Great Smoky, and gradually took its way down the steep western slopes, and presently the light faded from the purple earth, and the stars were in the great altitudes of the sky, alternating with vast spaces of gloom, for the night had brought clouds, and the moonrise was impenetrably veiled. Still he slept, unheeding that the fire had died to an ember on the hearth, unheeding that the wind howled in the gorge. The door shook in its rude grasp; the roof creaked; sharp draughts came through the crannies, and scattered the dry ashes about the floor. Suddenly there was a sound outside other than the swirl of the dead leaves about the rotting threshold. A stealthy step came to the window. A face peered in through the rifts of the batten shutter. Rathburn might have seen it, for the embers sent up at that moment a fitful blue gleam which played over the room, showing its dishevelment and his own recumbent figure, with its yellow head on the old dark saddle, and showing as well the face that looked in,—but he was too deep, far too deep, in his dream. The tiny flame dropped; the red ember glowed; the room was lighter than the black wilds without, and perhaps the recumbent figure beside the hearth was still visible to the peering eyes, themselves now invisible from within. The subtile influence of their long, steadfast scrutiny shook even the deep securities of slumber. It pervaded Rathburn’s consciousness,—how, with all his science he might hardly have explained. He shifted his attitude once or twice; then with a great start he struggled up to his feet. For a moment the stupefying pain of a sudden awakening possessed his torpid consciousness. The next, he heard the wind trumpeting a blast that he had learned to know, and he reluctantly realised his surroundings. Once more he felt the chill of those scrutinizing eyes upon him,—a vague uneasiness which he could not recognize. His long-drawn sigh of somnolent reaction was checked midway. He stooped to the fire, and vainly sought to coax the embers to kindle anew. The sound of his own voice in an impatient exclamation had a strange echo in the empty loneliness of the place. He had matches in his pockets, or, like the provident mountaineers, he would not have suffered the fire to die. It was only a moment or two before the long, ribbon-like unfurlings of the white flames of pine knots were flying up the chimney, and there was no face at the window, and no sound but the riotous play of the wind without. He had taken a chair before the fire when his alert ear discriminated in the elemental stir a step that deliberately approached. There was a hand upon the latch.