About
noon
But , one way or another , the smoke of that ill-omened furnace protected the first steps of my escape , and led me unobserved to the cañon . There , sure enough , I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of saddle-horses ; and thenceforward , all night long , we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains . A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge ; lay there all day concealed ; and the next night , before the glow had faded out of the west , resumed our wanderings . About noon we stopped again , in a lawn upon a little river , where was a screen of bushes ; and here my guide , handing me a bundle from his pack , bade me change my dress once more . The bundle contained clothing of my own , taken from our house , with such necessaries as a comb and soap . I made my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool ; and as I was so doing and smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image , the mountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness ; and where I still stood astonished , there sprang up and swiftly increased a storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds . Shall I own to you that I fell upon my face and shrieked ?