of white mound around its roots, and I wondered curiously. It was
not until I had come close that I saw its nature.

"All around the roots and barkless trunk was heaped a wilderness of
little bones. Tiny skulls of rodents and of birds, thousands of them,
rising about the dead tree and streaming off for several yards in all
directions, until the dreadful pile ended in isolated skulls and
scattered skeletons. Here and there a larger bone appeared,--the thigh
of a sheep, the hoofs of a horse, and to one side, grinning slowly, a
human skull.

"I stood quite still, staring with all my eyes, when suddenly the dense
silence was broken by a faint, forlorn cry high over my head. I looked
up and saw a great falcon turning and sailing downward just over the
tree. In a moment more she fell motionless on the bleaching bones.

"Horror struck me, and I rushed for home, my brain whirling, a strange
numbness growing in me. I ran steadily, on and on. At last I glanced up.
Where was the rise of hill? I looked around wildly. Close before me was
the dead tree with its pile of bones. I had circled it round and round,
and the valley wall was still a mile and a half away.

"I stood dazed and frozen. The sun was sinking, red and dull, towards
the line of hills. In the east the dark was growing fast. Was there
still time? _Time!_ It was not _that_ I wanted, it was _will_! My feet
seemed clogged as in a nightmare. I could hardly drag them over the
barren earth. And then I felt the slow chill creeping through me. I
looked down. Out of the earth a thin mist was rising, collecting in
little pools that grew ever larger until they joined here and there,
their currents swirling slowly like thin blue smoke. The western hills
halved the copper sun. When it was dark I should hear that shriek again,
and then I should die. I knew that, and with every remaining atom of
will I staggered towards the red west through the writhing mist that
crept clammily around my ankles, retarding my steps.

"And as I fought my way off from the Tree, the horror grew, until at
last I thought I was going to die. The silence pursued me like dumb
ghosts, the still air held my breath, the hellish fog caught at my feet
like cold hands.

"But I won! though not a moment too soon. As I crawled on my hands and
knees up the brown slope, I heard, far away and high in the air, the cry
that already had almost bereft me of reason. It was faint and vague, but
unmistakable in its horrib