us when we got home at midnight.

"Therefore we hurried as fast as possible up the mountain side, while
the blue dusk closed in about us, and the light died in the purple sky.
At first we had talked hilariously, and the little dog had leaped ahead
of us with the utmost joy. Latterly, however, a curious oppression came
on us; we did not speak or even whistle, while the dog fell behind,
following us with hesitation in every muscle.

"We had passed through the foothills and the low spurs of the mountains,
and were almost at the top of the main range, when life seemed to go out
of everything, leaving the world dead, so suddenly silent the forest
became, so stagnant the air. Instinctively we halted to listen.

"Perfect silence,--the crushing silence of deep forests at night; and
more, for always, even in the most impenetrable fastnesses of the wooded
mountains, is the multitudinous murmur of little lives, awakened by the
darkness, exaggerated and intensified by the stillness of the air and
the great dark: but here and now the silence seemed unbroken even by the
turn of a leaf, the movement of a twig, the note of night bird or
insect. I could hear the blood beat through my veins; and the crushing
of the grass under our feet as we advanced with hesitating steps sounded
like the falling of trees.

"And the air was stagnant,--dead. The atmosphere seemed to lie upon the
body like the weight of sea on a diver who has ventured too far into its
awful depths. What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to
the din of ordinary experience. This was silence in the absolute, and it
crushed the mind while it intensified the senses, bringing down the
awful weight of inextinguishable fear.

"I know that Nils and I stared towards each other in abject terror,
listening to our quick, heavy breathing, that sounded to our acute
senses like the fitful rush of waters. And the poor little dog we were
leading justified our terror. The black oppression seemed to crush him
even as it did us. He lay close on the ground, moaning feebly, and
dragging himself painfully and slowly closer to Nils's feet. I think
this exhibition of utter animal fear was the last touch, and must
inevitably have blasted our reason--mine anyway; but just then, as we
stood quaking on the bounds of madness, came a sound, so awful, so
ghastly, so horrible, that it seemed to rouse us from the dead spell
that was on us.

"In the depth of the silence came a cry, begi