himself only, but to a girl as well--a coward!--one bold in the
daylight, while there was nothing to fear, but trembling like any
slave when the night arrived. There was, there must be, something
unfair in it! A spell had been cast upon him! He had eaten, he had
drunk something that did not agree with courage! In any case he had
been taken unprepared! How was he to know what the going down of the
sun would be like? It was no wonder he should have been surprised into
terror, seeing it was what it was--in its very nature so terrible!
Also. one could not see where danger might be coming from! You might
be torn in pieces, carried off, or swallowed up, without even seeing
where to strike a blow! Every possible excuse he caught at, eager as a
self-lover to lighten his self-contempt. That day he astonished the
huntsmen--terrified them with his reckless darings--all to prove to
himself he was no coward. But nothing eased his shame. One thing only
had hope in it--the resolve to encounter the dark in solemn earnest,
now that he knew something of what it was. It was nobler to meet a
recognized danger than to rush contemptuously into what seemed
nothing--nobler still to encounter a nameless horror. He could conquer
fear and wipe out disgrace together. For a marksman and swordsman like
him, he said, one with his strength and courage, there was but danger.
Defeat there was not. He knew the darkness now, and when it came he
would meet it as fearless and cool as now he felt himself. And again
he said, "We shall see!"

He stood under the boughs of a great beech as the sun was going down,
far away over the jagged hills: before it was half down, he was
trembling like one of the leaves behind him in the first sigh of the
night-wind. The moment the last of the glowing disc vanished, he
bounded away in terror to gain the valley, and his fear grew as he
ran. Down the side of the hill, an abject creature, he went bounding