isely what they will do if their orders are disregarded.
He was prepared to threaten with desperate words, but not to support
that threat with a desperate act, and he hung there uncertain, cursing
under his breath.

I would have gone on as my uncle had told me to do, but now the man came
to a decision.

"No!" he said; "if he goes in, you go in, too!"

And he seized my bridle and turned my horse into the crossroad; then he
followed.

There is a long twilight in these hills. The sun departs, but the day
remains. A sort of weird, dim, elfin day, that dawns at sunset, and
envelops and possesses the world. The land is full of light, but it is
the light of no heavenly sun. It is a light equal everywhere, as though
the earth strove to illumine itself, and succeeded with that labor.

The stars are not yet out. Now and then a pale moon rides in the sky,
but it has no power, and the light is not from it. The wind is usually
gone; the air is soft, and the fragrance of the fields fills it like a
perfume. The noises of the day and of the creatures that go about by day
cease, and the noises of the night and of the creatures that haunt the
night begin. The bat swoops and circles in the maddest action, but
without a sound. The eye sees him, but the ear hears nothing. The
whippoorwill begins his plaintive cry, and one hears, but does not see.

It is a world that we do not understand, for we are creatures of the
sun, and we are fearful lest we come upon things at work here, of which
we have no experience, and that may be able to justify themselves
against our reason. And so a man falls into silence when he travels in
this twilight, and he looks and listens with his senses out on guard.

It was an old wagon-road that we entered, with the grass growing between
the ruts. The horses traveled without a sound until we began to enter a
grove of ancient beech trees; then the dead leaves cracked and rustled.
Abner did not look behind him, and so he did not know that I came. He
knew that some one followed, but he doubtless took it for the sentinel
in the road. And I did not speak.

The man with the cocked gun rode grimly behind me. I did not know
whither we went or to what end. We might be shot down from behind a tree
or murdered in our saddles. It was not a land where men took desperate
measures upon a triviality. And I knew that Abner rode into something
that little men, lacking courage, would gladly have stayed out of.

Presently my e