Every time Dick rustled the straw, she awoke.

Every time a bird called or an owl hooted, she started up wide awake.

She woke once from a dream of her uncle, with, as she thought, his voice echoing in her ear.
Another time she felt certain he was banging at the barn door, trying to get in, to beat her and Dick, and take them both back.
"Oh, I wish it was morning!" she sighed, and sat up on her straw bed, to see if daylight was beginning to dawn yet.
But all was dark still; even the moon had gone.

She was just about to lie wearily down again, when a real, not a dream sound, caught her ear.

The sound of nailed boots on stones, and stealthy footsteps.
"It really is someone climbing the wall and coming up the garden," she thought to herself, and her mouth and throat grew dry with terror, and her heart beat suffocatingly.