between the great black shadows of the trees. My ears are as quick as
my eyes, and once or twice I thought that I heard a twig crack; but you
know how many sounds there are in a forest at night, and how difficult
it is even to say what direction they come from.

We walked for rather more than a mile, and I knew exactly what our
destination was, long before we got there. In the centre of one of the
glades, there is the shattered stump of what must at some time have been
a most gigantic tree. It is called the Abbot's Beech, and there are so
many ghostly stories about it, that I know many a brave soldier who
would not care about mounting sentinel over it. However, I cared as
little for such folly as the Emperor did, so we crossed the glade and
made straight for the old broken trunk. As we approached, I saw that two
men were waiting for us beneath it.

When I first caught sight of them they were standing rather behind it,
as if they were not anxious to be seen, but as we came nearer they
emerged from its shadow and walked forward to meet us. The Emperor
glanced back at me, and slackened his pace a little so that I came
within arm's length of him. You may think that I had my hilt well to the
front, and that I had a very good look at these two people who were
approaching us.

The one was tall, remarkably so, and of very spare frame, while the
other was rather below the usual height, and had a brisk, determined way
of walking. They each wore black cloaks, which were slung right across
their figures, and hung down upon one side, like the mantles of Murat's
dragoons. They had flat black caps, like those I have since seen in
Spain, which threw their faces into darkness, though I could see the
gleam of their eyes from beneath them. With the moon behind them and