midnight
There was no mistaking the rising anger of his voice . The cowed group rose in a frightened way and disappeared one by one silently through the labyrinth . Pereo waited until the last had vanished , and then , cramming his stiff sombrero over his eyes with an ejaculation , brushed his way through the shrubbery in the direction of the stables . Later , when the full glory of the midnight moon had put out every straggling light in the great house ; when the long veranda slept in massive bars of shadow , and even the tradewinds were hushed to repose , Pereo silently issued from the stable-yard in vaquero 's dress , mounted and caparisoned . Picking his way cautiously along the turf-bordered edge of the gravel path , he noiselessly reached a gate that led to the lane . Walking his spirited mustang with difficulty until the house had at last disappeared in the intervening foliage , he turned with an easy canter into a border bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada . In a quarter of an hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows , shut in a half circle of grassy treeless hills .