de
these speculations not at all unpleasing. He looked at his hand, blanched
by the moonlight, lying beside him upon the grass, and thought how like a
dead hand it seemed, and what if he could not move it, nor his body, nor
could ever rise from the grass, but must lie there upon the lonely hilltop
in the untrodden wilderness, until that which had ridden and hunted and
passed so buoyantly through life should become but a few dry bones, a
handful of dust. He was of his time, and its laxness of principle and
conduct; if he held within himself the potential scholar, statesman, and
philosopher, there were also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine.
He followed the fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died
to-night his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He
wondered, somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed
it round--pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ambition--should be
plucked away. Poor soul! Surely it would feel itself something shrunken,
stripped of warmth, shiveringly bare to all the winds of heaven. The
radiance of the moon usurped the sky, but behind that veil of light the
invisible and multitudinous stars were shining. Beyond those stars were
other stars, beyond those yet others; on and on went the stars, wise men
said. Beyond them all, what then? And where was the place of the soul?
What would it do? What heaven or hell would it find or make for itself?
Guesswork all!

The silver pomp of the night began to be oppressive to him. There was
beauty, but it was a beauty cold and distant, infinitely withdrawn from
man and his concerns. Woods and mountains held aloof, communing with the
stars. They were kindred and of one house; it was man who was alien, a
stranger and alone. The hilltop cared not that he lay thereon; the grass
would grow as greenly when he was in his grave; all his tragedies since
time began he might reenact there below, and the mountains would not bend
to look.

He flung his arm across his eyes to shut out the moonlight, and tried to
sleep. Finding the attempt a vain one, and that the night pressed more and
more heavily upon him, he sat up with the intention of shaking the negro
awake, and so providing himself with other company than his own thoughts.

His eyes had been upon the mountains, but now, with the sudden movement,
he faced the eastern horizon and a long cleft between the hills. Far down
this opening something was on fire, burn