I listened breathlessly for some warning of what they were going to do next, but their voices seemed to die away in the distance.

They were retreating from the window.

Were they also retreating from the house altogether?
Had they given up the idea of effecting an entrance in despair?
A long silence followed--a silence which tried my courage even more severely than the tumult of their first attack on the cottage.
Dreadful suspicions now beset me of their being able to accomplish by treachery what they had failed to effect by force.

Well as I knew the cottage, I began to doubt whether there might not be ways of cunningly and silently entering it against which I was not provided.

The ticking of the clock annoyed me; the crackling of the fire startled me.