Lieutenant
Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for
nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever
ready to incur.
Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants
and retired to his station, he seated himself on a log,
and with senses all alert began his vigil. For greater
ease he loosened his sword-belt and taking his heavy
revolver from his holster laid it on the log beside
him. He felt very comfortable, though he hardly
gave the fact a thought, so intently did he listen for
any sound from the front which might have a menac-
ing significance--a shout, a shot, or the footfall of
one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of some-
thing worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean
of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender,
broken stream that seemed to plash against the in-
tercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming
small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But
these leaks were few and served only to accentuate
the blackness of his environment, which his imagina-
tion found it easy to people with all manner of un-
familiar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely
grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night
and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest
is not an unknown experience needs not to be told
what another world it all is--how even the most
commonplace and familiar objects take on another
character. The trees group themselves differently;
they draw closer together, as if in fear.
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