me; I do not know if it means anything at all to you. But I have sought
long and far for these words, to utter an all but unutterable thought.

When you walk in the forest you do not count the lives that you tread into
nothingness. When you rejoice with the springtime you do not hear the cries
of the young things that are choked and beaten down and dying. When you
watch the wild thing in your snare you do not know the meaning of the torn
limbs, and the throbbing heart, and the awful silence of the creature
trapped. When you go where the poor live, and see thin faces and hungry
eyes and crouching limbs, you do not think of these things either.

But I, reader--I dwell in the Valley of the Shadow.

Sometimes it is silent in my Valley, and the creatures sit in terror of
their own voices; sometimes there are screams that pierce the sky; but
there is never any answer in my Valley. There are quivering hands there,
and racked limbs, and aching hearts, and panting souls. There is gasping
struggle, glaring failure--maniac despair. For over my Valley rolls _The
Shadow_, a giant thing, moving with the weight of mountains. And you
stare at it, you feel it; you scream, you pray, you weep; you hold up your
hands to your God, you grow mad; but the Shadow moves like Time, like the
sun, and the planets in the sky. It rolls over you, and it rolls on; and
then you cry out no more.

It is that way in my Valley. The Shadow is the Shadow of Death.




CONTENTS