of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may
have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a
loathing which had in it an element of resentment. What others have
respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence--was
altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not
picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side--a dismal thing,
hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring
was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of
that which he was ever ready to incur.

Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants and retired to his
station, he seated himself on a log, and with senses all alert began
his vigil. For greater ease he loosened his sword-belt and taking
his heavy revolver from his holster laid it on the log beside him.
He felt very comfortable, though he hardly gave the fact a thought,
so intently did he listen for any sound from the front which might
have a menacing significance--a shout, a shot, or the footfall of one
of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing.
From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and
there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the
intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools
among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only
to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination
found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes,
menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and
silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience
needs not to be told what another world it all is--how even the most
commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The