While crossing the room he looked toward the fire-place. Among the ashes he caught the sullen red of a single point of fire, like the glowering eye of some ogre, watching him in the darkness.
Beside the huge latch, there were three ponderous pieces of timber which spanned the inner side of the door, the ends dropping into massive sockets strong enough to hold the puncheon slabs against prodigious pressure from the outside.
Colonel Preston carefully lifted the upper one out of place and then did the same with the lowest. Then he placed his hand on the middle bar and held his ear close to the jamb, so that he might catch the first signal from the scout, whose return was due every minute.
The listening ear caught the silken sifting of the particles of snow, which insinuated themselves into and through the smallest crevices, and a slight shiver passed through the frame of the pioneer, who had thrown his blanket off his shoulders so that he might have his arms free to use the instant it should become necessary.
Colonel Preston had stood thus only a few minutes, when he fancied he heard some one on the outside. The noise was very slight and much as if a dog was scratching with his paw. Knowing that wood is a better conductor of sound than air, he pressed his ear against the door.
To his astonishment he then heard nothing except the snowflakes, which sounded like the tapping of multitudinous fairies, as they romped back and forth and up and down the door.
"That's strange," thought he, after listening a few minutes; "there's something unusual out there, and I don't know whether it is Jo or not. I'm afraid the poor fellow has been hurt and is afraid to make himself known."
The words were yet in his mouth, when he caught a faint tapping outside, as if made by the bill of a bird.
"That's Jo!" he exclaimed, immediately raising the end of the middle bar from its socket; "he must be hurt, or he is afraid to signal me, lest he be recognized."
At the moment the fastenings were removed, and Colonel Preston was about drawing the door inward, he stayed his hand, prompted so to do by the faintest suspicion that something was amiss.