midnight
But while they talked there was on him a vague dread , an indefinable misgiving , a feeling that he was disloyal to his mission , disloyal to her ; that their love could have but one ending , and that a dark one . Still he strove hard to forget everything , to shut out all the world , -- drinking to the full the bliss of the present , blinding his eyes to the pain of the future . But after they parted , when her presence was withdrawn and he was alone , he felt like a man faithless and dishonored ; like a prophet who had bartered the salvation of the people to whom he had been sent , in exchange for a woman 's kisses , which could bring him only disgrace and death . As he went back to the camp in the stillness of midnight , he was startled by a distant roar , and saw through the tree-tops flames bursting from the far-off crater of Mount Hood . The volcano was beginning one of its periodical outbursts . But to Cecil 's mind , imbued with the gloomy supernaturalism of early New England , and unconsciously to himself , tinged in later years with the superstition of the Indians among whom he had lived so long , that ominous roar , those flames leaping up into the black skies of night , seemed a sign of the wrath of God . The gravity , fixed attention , and decorum of these sons of the forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression .