He was full of his characteristic reveries and abstractions that afternoon; falling into them even at his wood-pile, leaning on his axe--so still that an emerald-throated lizard, who had slid upon the log, went to sleep under the forgotten stroke.
But at nightfall the wind arose,--at first as a distant murmur along the hillside, that died away before it reached the rocky ledge; then it rocked the tops of the tall redwoods behind the mill, but left the mill and the dried leaves that lay in the river-bed undisturbed.

Then the murmur was prolonged, until it became the continuous trouble of some far-off sea, and at last the wind possessed the ledge itself; driving the smoke down the stumpy chimney of the mill, rattling the sun-warped shingles on the roof, stirring the inside rafters with cool breaths, and singing over the rough projections of the outside eaves.

At nine o'clock he rolled himself up in his blankets before the fire, as was his wont, and fell asleep.
It was past midnight when he was awakened by the familiar clatter of boulders down the grade, the usual simulation of a wild rush from without that encompassed the whole mill, even to that heavy impact against the door, which he had heard once before.

In this he recognized merely the ordinary phenomena of his experience, and only turned over to sleep again.

But this time the door rudely fell in upon him, and a figure strode over his prostrate body, with a gun leveled at his head.
He sprang sideways for his own weapon, which stood by the hearth.