Perhaps he was coming now out of the night; perhaps she would even see him.
And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows at length to a thunder.
The heart of Mary Brown beat faster, though she could not see, but only felt the coming of the stranger.
The only sign she saw was in the horses, which showed an increasing uneasiness.

Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay, and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at the tethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if they feared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe--some vast and preternatural change--some forest fire which came galloping faster than even their fleet limbs could carry them.
Yet all beyond the pale of her camp-fire's light was silence, utter and complete silence.

It seemed as if a muscular energy went into the intensity of her listening, but not a sound reached her except a faint whispering of the wind in the dark trees above her.
But at last she knew that the thing was upon her.

The horses ceased their prancing and stared in a fixed direction through the thicket of shrubbery; the very wind grew hushed above her; she could feel the new presence as one feels the silence when a door closes and shuts away the sound of the street below.
It came on her with a shock, thrilling, terrible, yet not altogether unpleasant.

She rose, her hands clenched at her sides and her eyes abnormally wide as they stared in the same direction as the eyes of the two horses held.