red as blood, which divided the soft gray bending of the
grasses. Behind me the road made a sharp turn, descending out of thick
clouds into a little blood-red hollow, where it was crossed by an open
gate. In this gate, through which I had somehow come, stood two gray
leopards and a small ape. The beasts stood on tip-toe and eyed me with a
dreadful curiosity; and from somewhere in the little hollow I heard a
word whispered which I could not understand. But the beasts heard it,
and drew away through the open gate, and disappeared.

Between the footpath (which all the time gleamed redly through the
over-gathering grasses) and the rounded brink of the gulf there seemed
to be a fence of some sort, so fine that I could not quite distinguish
it, but which I knew to be there.

I turned my eyes to the low summit of the hill. There I saw a figure,
all gray, cleaving the grasses in flight as swift as an arrow. Behind,
in pursuit, came another figure, of the color of the grasses, tall and
terrible beyond thought. This being, as it seemed to me, was the Second
Death, and my knees trembled with horror and a sort of loathing. Then I
saw that he who fled made directly for me; and as they sped I could hear
a strange hissing and rustling of their garments cleaving the grasses.
When the fleeing ghost reached me, and fell at my feet, and clasped my
knees in awful fear, I felt myself grow strong, and all dread left my
soul. I reached forth my right hand and grasped the pursuing horror by
the throat.

I heard the being laugh, and the iron grip of my own strong and
implacable fingers seemed to close with a keen agony upon my own throat,
and a curtain seemed to fall over my eyes. Then I gasped for breath, and
a warm pungent smell clung in my nostrils, and a white light swam into
my eyes, and I heard a voice murmuring far off, but in an accent
strangely familiar and commonplace, "He's coming round all right now."

I opened my eyes with a dim wonder, and found myself surrounded by the
interested faces of the doctors and the clean white walls of the
hospital ward. I heard a sound of some one breathing hoarsely near by,
and a white-capped nurse with kind eyes stepped up to my pillow, and I
perceived that the heavy breather was myself. I was lying with my head
and neck swathed in bandages, and a sharp pain at my throat. Then
flashed across my memory the crash and sickening upheaval of the
collision. I wondered feebly how it had fared with my fe