midnight
IT was well that I was on the Federal captain 's horse . He knew this sort of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine . Mine would have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it . Another advantage was the moon , and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle . At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins . Mongrel dogs barked through the fence , and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse . Only the one cabin was lighted , and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played `` I lay ten dollars down . ''