profoundly believed. It had been made clear to us that he could see and
hear The Dead one night in January during a snowstorm, when he came in
and woke me in barrack-room because he had heard the Loose Spur. Our
spurs were not buckled on like the officers'; they were fixed into the
heel of the boot, and if a nail loosened upon either side the spur
dragged with an unmistakable noise. There was a sergeant who (for some
reason) had one so loosened on the last night he had ever gone the
rounds before his death, for in the morning as he came off guard he
killed himself, and the story went about among the drivers that
sometimes on stable guard in the thick of the night, when you watched
all alone by the lantern (with your three comrades asleep in the straw
of an empty stall), your blood would stop and your skin tauten at the
sound of a loose spur dragging on the far side of the stable, in the
dark. But though many had heard the story, and though some had pretended
to find proof for it, I never knew a man to feel and know it except this
man Frocot on that night. I remember him at the foot of my bed with his
lantern waking me from the rooted sleep of bodily fatigue, standing
there in his dark blue driver's coat and staring with terrible eyes. He
had undoubtedly heard and seen, but whether of himself from within,
imagining, or, as I rather believe, from without and influenced, it is
impossible to say. He was rough and poor, and he came from the Forest of
Ardennes.

The reason I remember him and write of him at this season is not,
however, this particular and dreadful visitation of his, but a folly or
a vision that befell him at this time of the year, now seventeen years
ago; for he had Christmas leave and was on his way from garrison to his
native place, and he was walking the last miles of the wood. It was the
night before Christmas. It was clear, and there was no wind, but the sky
was overcast with level clouds and the evening was very dark. He started