trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if
in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of
the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers--whispers that
startle--ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too,
such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange
night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with
stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves--it
may be the leap of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther.
What caused the breaking of that twig?--what the low, alarmed
twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a
name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which
have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to
change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how
little you know of the world in which you live!

Surrounded at a little distance by armed and watchful friends, Byring
felt utterly alone. Yielding himself to the solemn and mysterious
spirit of the time and place, he had forgotten the nature of his
connection with the visible and audible aspects and phases of the
night. The forest was boundless; men and the habitations of men did
not exist. The universe was one primeval mystery of darkness,
without form and void, himself the sole, dumb questioner of its
eternal secret. Absorbed in thoughts born of this mood, he suffered
the time to slip away unnoted. Meantime the infrequent patches of
white light lying amongst the tree-trunks had undergone changes of
size, form and place. In one of them near by, just at the roadside,
his eye fell upon an object that he had not previously observed. It
was almost before his face as he sat; he could have sworn that it had
not before been there. It was partly covered in shadow, but he could
see that it was a human figure. Instinctively he adjusted the clasp