midnight
Twenty years had passed since he had seen his elder brother , and then it had been after a gap of ten years . He remembered that night well . Tom was the only man who dared run the bar in the dark , and that last time , between nightfall and the dawn , with a southeaster breezing up , he had sailed his schooner in and out again . There had been no warning of his coming -- a clatter of hoofs at midnight , a lathered horse in the stable , and Tom had appeared , the salt of the sea on his face as his mother attested . An hour only he remained , and on a fresh horse was gone , while rain squalls rattled upon the windows and the rising wind moaned through the redwoods , the memory of his visit a whiff , sharp and strong , from the wild outer world . A week later , sea-hammered and bar-bound for that time , had arrived the revenue cutter _ Bear _ , and there had been a column of conjecture in the local paper , hints of a heavy landing of opium and of a vain quest for the mysterious schooner _ Halcyon _ . Only Fred and his mother , and the several house Indians , knew of the stiffened horse in the barn and of the devious way it was afterward smuggled back to the fishing village on the beach .