. Strange things were happening beneath that moon; in the
crucible of destiny a new land was forming, a new order of things was
rising on the ashes of the old. Change, long germinating in hidden
depths, was in the air, blowing warm with the breath of the South; in
the earth, stirring with the first quickening of Spring; in the hearts
and minds of men. And it was in Nicanor's heart as he rode fast through
the night, fostered in his long season of darkness, unconscious, and
inevitable as the changes which were taking place around him.

Ahead of him the great road stretched white in the moonlight, a broad
ribbon which lost itself among hills and in the shadows of trees. In his
ears was the thunder of his horse's feet, pounding insistent clamor into
the quiet of the night; the wind of the speed of his going swept cool
against his face. The night was gray around him, a velvet moon-steeped
darkness, odorous with the fragrance of breaking earth. Far away the
deep-throated bay of a dog rose and died across the world. A bell note,
thinned by distance to a faint dream-sound, stole over silent hill and
valley; peace seemed to wrap the world around as in a cloister garden.
Yet not so many miles away were blazing fires, and red wounds, and the
black and bitter death of a battle lost. With every mile the scene
unrolled itself before him; off in the wide rolling country, which
stretched on either hand, lights twinkled here and yonder, wakeful eyes
of watchfulness among the hills. He passed pale glimmering bogs where by
day lonely herons brooded, and wide barren heaths over which the road
led straight as an arrow's flight.

And as the miles reeled away under him his excitement began to mount
with the sweep of his horse's stride. The exultation of rapid motion
mingled with the rising fever of his wound; he wished to shout aloud, to
sing. Vague forms seemed to slip by him in the shadows; in every bush
beside the road he saw white faces lurking. Strange and half-formed
impressions haunted him, of bearded men passing, who sometimes spoke an
unknown tongue and sometimes vanished silently as ghosts. Later, he
could not tell if he had seen them or if it had been but his fevered
dreams; for always when he forced himself to rouse and look about him
sanely, the road reached before him white and deserted.

All sense of pain left him, even all consciousness of the horse that he
bestrode. He seemed floating miraculously through air, and was aware