noon
Slipping down from his perilous bed , he resumed the old familiar garments that belonged to him as Ronald Wyde , shuddering with emotion as he did so . Only pausing to give one look at the pale heap in the shadowy corner , and at the other sleeper under the now dying lamp , he quitted the room and locked its heavy door upon the two silent guardians of its life-secrets . When he reached the street , he found the rain had ceased to drop , and that the cold stars blinked over the slumbrous town . Before noon he had taken leave of Frau Spritzkrapfen , turned buxom Lottchen scarlet all over by a hearty , sudden , farewell-kiss , and was far on his way from Freiberg , with its red-vined balcony and its dark laboratory , never again to visit it or them . And as the busy engine toiled and shrieked , and with each beat of its mighty steam-heart carried him further away , his thoughts flew back and clustered around witless , brown-eyed birdling . Poor child , he never learned her fate . * * * * * I heard this strange story from its hero , one sunny summer morning as we swept over the meadowy reaches of the Erie Railway , or hung along the cliffside by the wooded windings of the Susquehanna .