Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/13



stirred uneasily in his sleep, sighed, muttered, and presently became  partly awake. Thereupon he was conscious that all was not as it had been when slumber  had overtaken him, for, beyond his closed  lids, the attic, which should have been as  dark at this hour as the inside of any pocket,  was illuminated. He opened his eyes. The rafters a few feet above his head were visible  in a strange radiance. He raised himself on an elbow, blinking and curious. The light did not come from the room below, nor was  it the yellow glow of a pine-knot. No sound came to him save the loud breathing of his  father and Obid, the servant, the former near  at hand, the latter at the other end of the  attic: no sound, that is, save the soft sighing  of the night breeze in the pines and hemlocks  at the eastern edge of the clearing. That was