There was more muffled plunging, a silence, the rustle of paper,
the quick spurt of a match, and then the uplifting of a flickering
flame. But it revealed only the heads and shoulders of three
horsemen, framed within a nebulous ring of light, that still left
their horses and even their lower figures in impenetrable shadow.
Then the flame leaped up and died out with a few zigzagging sparks
that were falling to the ground, when a third voice, that was low
but somewhat pleasant in its cadence, said:--

"Be careful where you throw that. You were careless last time.
With this wind and the leaves like tinder, you might send a furnace
blast through the woods."

"Then at least we'd see where we were."

Nevertheless, he moved his horse, whose trampling hoofs beat out
the last fallen spark. Complete darkness and silence again
followed. Presently the first speaker continued:--

"I reckon we'll have to wait here till the next squall clears away
the scud from the sky? Hello! What's that?"

Out of the obscurity before them appeared a faint light,--a dim but
perfectly defined square of radiance,--which, however, did not
appear to illuminate anything around it. Suddenly it disappeared.

"That's a house--it's a light in a window," said the second voice.

"House be d--d!" retorted the first speaker. "A house with a
window on Galloper's Ridge, fifteen miles from anywhere? You're