The very
silence has another quality than the silence of the
day. And it is full of half-heard whispers--whispers
that startle--ghosts of sounds long dead. There are
living sounds, too, such as are never heard under
other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the
cries of small animals in sudden encounters with
stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the
dead leaves--it may be the leap of a wood-rat, it
may be the footfall of a panther. What caused the
breaking of that twig?--what the low, alarmed
twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds
without a name, forms without substance, transla-
tions in space of objects which have not been seen
to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to
change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and
the gaslight, how little you know of the world in
which you live!
Surrounded at a little distance by armed and
watchful friends, Byring felt utterly alone. Yielding
himself to the solemn and mysterious spirit of the
time and place, he had forgotten the nature of his
connection with the visible and audible aspects and
phases of the night. The forest was boundless; men
and the habitations of men did not exist. The uni-
verse was one primeval mystery of darkness, with-
out form and void, himself the sole, dumb questioner
of its eternal secret. Absorbed in thoughts born of
this mood, he suffered the time to slip away unnoted.
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