It had been the ambition of Keturah’s life to see a burglar.  The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar, but two.  She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them.  She confesses to a natural and unconquerable pride in them.  It came about on this wise:—­

It was one of Keturah’s wide-awake nights, and she had been wandering off into the fields at the foot of the garden, where it was safe and still.  There is, by the way, a peculiar awe in the utter hush of the earliest morning hours, of which no one can know who has not familiarized himself with it in all its moods.  A solitary walk in a solitary place, with the great world sleeping about you, and the great skies throbbing above you, and the long unrest of the panting summer night, fading into the cool of dews, and pure gray dawns, has in it something of what Mr. Robertson calls “God’s silence.”

Once, on one of these lonely rambles, Keturah found away in the fields, under the shadow of an old stone-wall, a baby’s grave.  It had no headstone to tell its story, and the weeds and brambles of many years had overgrown it.  Keturah is not of a romantic disposition, especially on her midnight tramps, but she sat down by the little nameless thing, and looked from it to the arch of eternal stars that, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, kept steadfast watch over it, and was very still.

It is one of the standing grievances of her life that Amram, while never taking the trouble to go and look, insists upon it that was nothing but somebody’s pet dog.  She knows better.

On this particular night, Keturah, in coming up from the garden to return to the house, had a dim impression that something crossed the walk in front of her and disappeared among the rustling trees.  The impression was sufficiently strong to keep her sitting up for half an hour at her window, under the feeling that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.  She has indeed been asked why she did not reconnoitre the rustling trees upon the spot.  She considers that would have been an exceedingly poor stroke of policy, and of an impolitic thing Keturah is not capable.  She sees far and plans deep.  Supposing she had gone and been shot through the head, where would have been the fun of her burglars?  To yield a life-long aspiration at the very moment that it is within grasp, was too much to ask even of Keturah.

Words cannot describe the sensations of the moment, when that half-hour was rewarded by the sight of two stealthy, cat-like figures, creeping out from among the trees.  A tall man and a little man, and both with very unbanditti-like straw-hats on.