about
three o'clock in the morning
Shaking off the sleep that held him , he crept to the window and looked out . The moon was gone and the stars had almost faded from the inky black dome . He guessed the hour with the acute instinct of one to whom the vagaries of night have become familiar through long understanding . It would now be about three o'clock in the morning , with the creeping dawn an hour and a half away . Suddenly his gaze fell upon a light moving among the trees some distance from the cabin . It appeared and disappeared , like a jack o ' lantern , but always it moved southward , obscured every few feet by an intervening trunk or a clump of brush . As he watched the bobbing light , he heard some one stirring in the room below .