A Damaged Reputation by Harold Bindloss

The half-moon Barbara watched from her window floated slowly above the serrated tops of the dusky pines when Brooke groped his way through their shadow across a strip of the Englishman's swamp. The ranch which he was making for rose darkly before him with the willows clustering close up to that side of it, and he stopped and stood listening when he reached them. The night was very still, so still, indeed, that the deep silence vaguely troubled him. High above the climbing forests great ramparts of never-melting snow gleamed against the blue, and standing there, hot, breathless, and a trifle muddy, he felt their impressive white serenity, until he started at a faint rattle in the house. It ceased suddenly, but it had set his heart throbbing unpleasantly fast, though he was sensible of a little annoyance with himself because this was the case.

There was nothing he need fear, and he was, indeed, not quite sure that the prospect of facing a physical peril would have been altogether unpleasant then. Devine was away, the women were doubtless asleep, and it was the fact that he was about to creep like a thief into a house where he had been hospitably welcomed which occasioned his uneasiness. It was true that he only meant to acquire information which would enable him to recover the dollars he had been defrauded of, but the reflection brought him no more consolation than it had done on other occasions when he had been sensible of the same disgust and humiliation.