Book Two The Woman - Chapter 42 How Sir Maurice Kept His Word

Night, with a rising moon, and over all things a great quietude,
a deep, deep silence. Air, close and heavy, without a breath to
wake the slumbering trees; an oppressive stillness, in which
small sounds magnified themselves, and seemed disproportionately
loud.

And presently, as I went upon my way, I forgot the old man
sleeping so peacefully with the rusty staple clasped to his
shrunken breast, and thought only of the proud woman who had
given her life into my keeping, and who, henceforth, would walk
with me, hand in hand, upon this Broad Highway, over rough
places, and smooth--even unto the end. So I strode on, full of a
deep and abiding joy, and with heart that throbbed and hands that
trembled because I knew that she watched and waited for my
coming.

A sound broke upon the stillness--sudden and sharp--like the
snapping of a stick. I stopped and glanced about me--but it had
come and gone--lost in the all-pervading calm.

And presently, reaching the leafy path that led steeply down into
the Hollow, I paused a moment to look about me and to listen
again; but the deep silence was all unbroken, save for the
slumberous song of the brook, that stole up to me from the
shadows, and I wondered idly what that sudden sound might have
been. So I began to descend this leafy path, and went on to meet
that which lay waiting for me in the shadows.