nearly midnight
Good-night . '' The `` poor-white '' neighbor rode away , little dreaming that the colored man had estimated him aright , and accounted him only an emissary of his foes , nor did he comprehend the importance of the information he had given . Mollie Ainslie had been absent from Red Wing more than a month . It was nearly midnight . The gibbous moon hung over the western tree-tops . There was not a sound to be heard in the little hamlet , but strangely draped figures might have been seen moving about in the open glades of the piney woods which skirted Red Wing upon the west . One after another they stole across the open space between the church and the pine grove , in its rear , until a half-dozen had collected in its shadow .