barn.

When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were
gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing,
but she could see nothing.

Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great
stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to
see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knot-hole. The sentry
had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The
prisoner still sat on the feed-box, moodily staring at the floor. The
girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax. She
started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the men
would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They might
have been two dead men.

The girl felt impelled to look at the corner of the interior where were
the cow-stalls. There was no light there save the appearance of peculiar
grey haze which marked the track of the dimming rays of the lantern. All
else was sombre shadow. At last she saw something move there. It might
have been as small as a rat, or it might have been a part of something
as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that something in that
spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly, and at other times it
vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her occasionally to greatly
tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and faint lights. At last,
however, she perceived a human head. It was monstrously dishevelled and
wild. It moved slowly forward until its glance could fall upon the
prisoner and then upon the sentry. The wandering rays caused the eyes to
glitter like silver. The girl's heart pounded so that she put her hand
over it.