The wind had risen again, and the faint light on the opposite wall grew tremulous and shifting with the movement of the foliage without.  But presently the glow became quite obliterated, as if by the intervention of some opaque body outside the window.  He rose hurriedly and went to the casement.  But at the same moment he fancied he heard the jamming of a door or window in quite another direction, and his examination of the casement before him showed him only the silver light of the thinly clouded sky falling uninterruptedly through the bars and foliage on the interior of the whitewashed embrasure.  Then a conception of his mistake flashed across him.  The line of the casa was long, straggling, and exposed elsewhere; why should the attempt to enter or communicate with any one within be confined only to this single point?  And why not satisfy himself at once if any trespassers were lounging around the walls, and then confront them boldly in the open?  Their discovery and identification was as important as the defeat of their intentions.

He relit the candle, and, placing it on a small table by the wall beyond the visual range of the window, rearranged the curtain so that, while it permitted the light to pass out, it left the room in shadow.  He then opened the door softly, locked it behind him, and passed noiselessly into the hall.  Susy’s and Mrs. McClosky’s rooms were at the further end of the passage, but between them and the boudoir was the open patio, and the low murmur of the voices of servants, who still lingered until he should dismiss them for the night.  Turning back, he moved silently down the passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden.  This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution.  The rain had recommenced.  Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from a peg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and “sou’wester” of Peyton’s, which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking the door behind him.  To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol from the stablemen, he did not attempt to take out his own horse, but trusted to find some vacquero’s mustang in the corral.  By good luck an old “Blue Grass” hack of Peyton’s, nearest the stockade as he entered, allowed itself to be quickly caught.  Using its rope headstall for a bridle, Clarence vaulted on its bare back, and paced cautiously out into the road.  Here he kept the curve of the long line of stockade until he reached the outlying field where, half hidden in the withered, sapless, but still standing stalks of grain, he slowly began a circuit of the casa.