midnight
Ere turning the canoe towards home , Cyrus drove it a few feet nearer to shore , again warily listening for any further sound of game . Just then another wild , whooping scream cleft the night air ; and , on looking towards the bank , Neal beheld his owlship , who had finished the squirrel , seated on an aged windfall , -LSB- 1 -RSB- one end of which dipped into the water . -LSB- Footnote 1 : A forest tree which has been blown down . -RSB- The gray bird on the gray old trunk formed a second thrilling midnight picture , but at this moment young Farrar was in no mood for studying effects . He felt rather unstrung by his recent emotions ; and , though he was by no means an imaginative youth , he actually took it into his head half seriously that the whooping , hooting thing was taunting him with making a failure of the jacking business . Without pausing to consider whether the owl would furnish meat for the camp or not , he let fly at him suddenly with his rifle . The fate of that ghostly , big-eyed creature will be forever one of those mysteries which Neal Farrar would like to solve .