noon
How to decide this point themselves the brothers did not know ; but as it chanced , fortune was to decide it for them in her own fashion , and that before many suns had set . Two days of travel had passed . The brothers had long left behind them every trace of what had been familiar to them in the old life . The evening of the third day was stealing fast upon them , and they were yet , as it seemed , in the heart of the vast forest which they had entered soon after noon , and which they had hoped to pass completely through before the daylight waned . They had been told that they might look , if they pushed on fast , to reach the town of Castres by nightfall ; but the paths through the forest were intricate : they had several times felt uncertain as to whether they were going right . Now that the darkness was coming on so fast they were still more uncertain , and more than once they had heard behind and before them the unmistakable howl of the wolf . The hardy twins would have thought nothing of sleeping in the open air even at this somewhat inclement season ; but the proximity of the wolves was unpleasant .