et. As I did so I tripped over something.
A swarm of flies sung into the air around me, and looking down I saw
the matted fleece, with the poor little bones thrusting through, of the
dog we had bought in Hallsberg.

"Then my courage went out with a puff, and I knew that it all was true,
and that now I was frightened. Pride and the desire for adventure urged
me on, however, and I pressed into the close thicket that barred my way.
The path was hardly visible: merely the worn road of some small beasts,
for, though it showed in the crisp grass, the bushes above grew thick
and hardly penetrable. The land rose slowly, and rising grew clearer,
until at last I came out on a great slope of hill, unbroken by trees or
shrubs, very like my memory of that rise of land we had topped in order
that we might find the dead valley and the icy fog. I looked at the sun;
it was bright and clear, and all around insects were humming in the
autumn air, and birds were darting to and fro. Surely there was no
danger, not until nightfall at least; so I began to whistle, and with a
rush mounted the last crest of brown hill.

"There lay the Dead Valley! A great oval basin, almost as smooth and
regular as though made by man. On all sides the grass crept over the
brink of the encircling hills, dusty green on the crests, then fading
into ashy brown, and so to a deadly white, this last color forming a
thin ring, running in a long line around the slope. And then? Nothing.
Bare, brown, hard earth, glittering with grains of alkali, but otherwise
dead and barren. Not a tuft of grass, not a stick of brushwood, not even
a stone, but only the vast expanse of beaten clay.

"In the midst of the basin, perhaps a mile and a half away, the level
expanse was broken by a great dead tree, rising leafless and gaunt into
the air. Without a moment's hesitation I started down into the valley
and made for this goal. Every particle of fear seemed to have left me,
and even the valley itself did not look so very terrifying. At all
events, I was driven by an overwhelming curiosity, and there seemed to
be but one thing in the world to do,--to get to that Tree! As I trudged
along over the hard earth, I noticed that the multitudinous voices of
birds and insects had died away. No bee or butterfly hovered through the
air, no insects leaped or crept over the dull earth. The very air itself
was stagnant.

"As I drew near the skeleton tree, I noticed the glint of sunlight on a
kind