nearly
midnight
So no one witnessed the return of Alix Crown and her husband . They came out of the bleak , unfriendly night and knocked at David Windom 's door . There were lights in his sitting-room windows ; through them they could see the logs blazing in the big fireplace , beside which sat the lonely , brooding figure of Alix 's father . It was late , -- nearly midnight , -- and the house was still . Old Maria Bliss and the one other servant had been in bed for hours . The farmhands slept in a cottage Windom had erected years before , acting upon his wife 's suggestion . It stood some two or three hundred yards from the main house .