e, now
on this front now on that, one outstretched arm urging the fight, the
other pressed against her side. "Ye are men: slay one another!" she
shouted. I saw her dead eyes and her dark spot, and recalled what I had
seen the night before.

Such was the battle of the dead, which I saw and heard as I lay under
the tree.

Just before sunrise, a breeze went through the forest, and a voice
cried, "Let the dead bury their dead!" At the word the contending
thousands dropped noiseless, and when the sun looked in, he saw never a
bone, but here and there a withered branch.

I rose and resumed my journey, through as quiet a wood as ever grew out
of the quiet earth. For the wind of the morning had ceased when the sun
appeared, and the trees were silent. Not a bird sang, not a squirrel,
mouse, or weasel showed itself, not a belated moth flew athwart my path.
But as I went I kept watch over myself, nor dared let my eyes rest on
any forest-shape. All the time I seemed to hear faint sounds of mattock
and spade and hurtling bones: any moment my eyes might open on things I
would not see! Daylight prudence muttered that perhaps, to appear, ten
thousand phantoms awaited only my consenting fancy.

In the middle of the afternoon I came out of the wood--to find before
me a second net of dry water-courses. I thought at first that I had
wandered from my attempted line, and reversed my direction; but I soon
saw it was not so, and concluded presently that I had come to another
branch of the same river-bed. I began at once to cross it, and was in
the bottom of a wide channel when the sun set.

I sat down to await the moon, and growing sleepy, stretched myself on
the moss. The moment my head was down, I heard the sounds of rushing
streams--all sorts of sweet watery noises. The veiled melody of the
molten music sang me into a dreamless sleep, and when I woke the sun
was already up, and the wrinkled country widely visible. Covered with
shadows it lay striped and mottled like the skin of some wild animal. As
the sun rose the shadows diminished, and it seemed as if the rocks were
re-absorbing the darkness that had oozed out of them during the night.

Hitherto I had loved my Arab mare and my books more, I fear, than live
man or woman; now at length my soul was athirst for a human presence,
and I longed even after those inhabitants of this alien world whom the
raven had so vaguely described as nearest my sort. With heavy yet hoping
heart, and min