“Footsteps behind us,” he whispered.

Without slackening pace I turned my head and looked. The clouds, high around the horizon, were thinning overhead, and the moon, herself invisible, yet lightened the darkness below. The sandy lane stretched behind us like a ribbon of twilight, — nothing to be seen but it and the ebony mass of bush and tree lining it on either side. We hastened on. A minute later and we heard behind us a sound like the winding of a small horn, clear, shrill, and sweet. Sparrow and I wheeled — and saw nothing. The trees ran down to the very edge of the wharf, upon whose rotten, loosened, and noisy boards we now trod. Suddenly the clouds above us broke, and the moon shone forth, whitening the mountainous clouds, the ridged and angry river, and the low, tree-fringed shore.