noon
`` Why did not you also steal his pocketbook as he lay asleep beside you , Roberta , Marquise of Grez and Bye ? '' I questioned myself with scorn and torture , as good Lightfoot crashed down from that Camp Heaven into the dark night . And on we rode , the large horse with the woman upon his back , for a long night , through fragrant thickets that caught at my riding breeches with rose tendril fingers and under thick forests of budding trees , through whose branches of tender leaves the wise old stars looked down upon my bitter weeping with nothing of comfort , perhaps because they had grown of a hardness of heart from having seen so many tears of women drop in the silence of a lonely night . Then came a dawn and a noon and a twilight through which I pushed forward the large horse with great cruelty , only pausing beside streams to allow that he drink of the water and also to throw myself down on my face and lap the cool refreshment like do all humble things . And , when at last the stars were again there to look down upon me , we arrived behind the barn of that Bud Bell to find all in the little house at rest . I thought of that small child in sleep in the arms of that woman , and a great sobbing came from my heart as I threw myself into my Cherry , after giving a supper to good Lightfoot , and fled down the long road to the distant city of Hayesville that lay away in the valley like a great nest of glowworms in a glade of the leaves of darkness . And among those glowworms I knew that more than a hundred friends to me were beginning to go into sleep with deep affection in their hearts for that Robert Carruthers whom wicked Roberta , Marquise of Grez and Bye , was about to steal from them .