Darkness began to settle over this lonely spot. Along the silent
and gloomy road we seemed to see shadowlike forms that flitted
here and there through the blackness of darkest night, a
blackness only relieved by a few stars that peered like silent
spectators from the dark draperies of clouds. Now a band of
people was seen moving not swiftly to the accompaniment of
martial music, but slowly and silently to the sighing night
wind. As we watched a lurid flame burst from the center of the
oval while a strange figure bent over it as he performed his
weird mystical rites. Now the light from the red and yellow
flames fell upon a vast group of dark figures and a thousand
gleaming eyes peered out of the velvety canopy around us. The
mournful distressing notes of the ghost bird broke the
stillness. The scream of some passing night bird replied as if
in answer to their weird calls. A great horned owl made us
shiver with his "hoo, hoo, hoo," as the flame shot upward in
scarlet circles. The night wind stirred the branches, which
sighed audibly, and died away leaving the place lonelier than
before. Then the sharp bark of a fox rang out from a neighboring
hill. The breeze started up again and a limb of a tree that
rubbed against its neighbor produced a wailing sound as of some
one in distress. We could see fantastic shapes out among the
gnarled tree trunks and ghostly forms appeared in the velvety
shadows and vanished again among the trees. The moon rose out
over the rim of the eastern hills and seemed almost to pause as
if some Oriental Magic was being wrought. A mist arose from the
river and hovered over the valley below us; the complaining
water of Brush creek mingled with the wailing of the screech owl
as the ghostly footfalls sounded more remote. The bullfrog's
harsh troonk "ushered in the night" and, imagining one of them