midnight
Mrs. Markham , the cynical and worldly , was strangely changed , perhaps the most changed of the three ; all her affectations were gone , and she was now only an earnest woman . And while the three worked they always watched for one man . And this man was not the same with any one of the three . It was past midnight and Helen did not know how long she had been upon the battlefield , working as she did in a kind of a dream , or rather mist , in which everything was fanciful and unreal , with her head full of strange sights and unheard sounds , when she saw two men ride side by side and silently out of the black forest -- two figures , one upright , powerful , the other drooping , with head that swayed slightly from side to side . She knew them at once despite the shadows of the trees and the faint moonlight -- and it was what her thoughts had told her would come true . It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erect and so powerful could fall ; nor had he . She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them .