Was that a groan that came upon her ear?
She started up, she went to the door; all was still.

A footstep now slowly approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of her fears.
The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the principal entrance, the door of which had been forced.

They were recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand murders, and who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine had impelled them.

The footsteps of many others were tracked to the seashore.

It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death of their leaders.