Moreover, everything was in its proper place just as she had always found it--the weapons, the bear skin coverlet and the water pitcher.
It occurred to Henrietta to close the door from the inside so that nobody might come upon her unawares while she slept.

But then the thought also struck her that it was not right to lock the old gentleman out of his own house especially as he might turn up in the early morning tired out and half frozen.

So she ultimately decided to stay up for him in order to tell him, as soon as he arrived, that she meant to obtain a separation from her husband, whose conduct she could no longer endure.
Till then she would try hard not to go to sleep.

But she was tired to death from her long run through the forest and was obliged at last to throw herself on the bear skin coverlet to rest; and gradually sleep overcame all her anguish, all her terror.
She might have slept for about a half an hour, a restless, phantom-haunted sleep at best, when she suddenly awoke.
It seemed to her as if she had heard a distant cry.

Perhaps she had only imagined she had heard it in her slumbers, and perhaps what she had dreamt was so awful and what she fancied she had heard was so terrible, that it had awakened her.
She began to listen attentively.