But Dick was still wide awake.
There was some tension of mind or muscle that kept sleep far from him.
So he remained at the window, casting up the events of the day and those that might come.
The evening was well advanced when he was quite sure that he heard a light step in the hall.

He would have paid little attention to it at an ordinary time, but, in all that silence and desolation, it called him like a drum-beat.

Only a light step, and yet it filled him with suspicion and alarm.

He was in the heart of a great and victorious Union army, but at the moment he felt that anything could happen in this strange house.
Slipping his pistol from his belt, he opened the door on noiseless hinges and stepped into the hall.

A figure was disappearing in its dim space, but, as he saw clearly, it was that of a woman.