the storm began sullenly to subside: one impetuous torrent, ten-fold more
violent than those that had preceded it, was followed by a momentary
stillness, which was again broken by a short relapse of a less formidable
severity, and the moment it ceased, the beautiful moon broke out, the
cloud rolled heavily away, and the sky shone forth, as fair and smiling
as Lady--at a ball, after she has been beating her husband at home.

But at that instant, or perhaps a second before the storm ceased, I
thought I heard the sound of a human cry. I paused, and my heart stood
still--I could have heard a gnat hum: the sound was not repeated; my ear
caught nothing but the plashing of the rain drops from the dead hedges,
and the murmur of the swollen dykes, as the waters pent within them
rolled hurriedly on. By and by, an owl came suddenly from behind me, and
screamed as it flapped across my path; that, too, went rapidly away: and
with a smile, at what I deemed my own fancy, I renewed my journey. I soon
came to the precipitous descent I have before mentioned; I dismounted,
for safety, from my drooping and jaded horse, and led him down the hill.
At a distance beyond I saw something dark moving on the grass which
bordered the road; as I advanced, it started forth from the shadow, and
fled rapidly before me, in the moonshine--it was a riderless horse. A
chilling foreboding seized me: I looked round for some weapon, such as
the hedge might afford; and finding a strong stick of tolerable weight
and thickness, I proceeded more cautiously, but more fearlessly than
before. As I wound down the hill, the moonlight fell full upon the
remarkable and lonely tree I had observed in the morning. Bare, wan, and
giant-like, as it rose amidst the surrounding waste, it borrowed even a
more startling and ghostly appearance from the cold and lifeless
moonbeams which fell around and upon it like a shroud. The retreating
animal I had driven before me, paused by this tree. I hastened my steps,
as if by an involuntary impulse, as well as the enfeebled animal I was