had been drinking hard for some
days, and, now the excitement of action had gone off, was fearfully
nervous. The snow-glint had dizzied his head, too, and he began to see
strange shapes forming themselves in the shade of each hollow, and
start at each stumble of his horse.

A swift-flying shadow upon the snow, and a rush of wings overhead. An
eagle. The lordly scavenger is following him, impatient for him to drop
and become a prey. Soar up, old bird, and bide thy time; on yonder
precipice thou shalt have good chance of a meal.

Twilight, and then night, and yet the snow but half past. There is a
rock in a hollow, where grow a few scanty tufts of grass which the poor
horse may eat. Here he will camp, fireless, foodless, and walk up and
down the livelong night, for sleep might be death. Though he is not in
thoroughly Alpine regions, yet still, at this time of the year, the
snow is deep and the frost is keen. It were as well to keep awake.

As he paced up and down beneath the sheltering rock, when night had
closed in, and the frosty stars were twinkling in the cold blue
firmament, strange ghosts and fancies came crowding on him thick and
fast. Down the long vista of a misspent, ruined life, he saw people
long since forgotten trooping up towards him. His father tottered
sternly on, as with a fixed purpose before him; his gipsy-mother,
Madge, strode forward pitiless; and poor ruined Ellen, holding her
child to her heart, joined the others, and held up her withered hand as
if in mockery. But then there came a face between him and all the other
figures which his distempered brain had summoned, and blotted them out;
the face of a young man, bearing a strange likeness to himself; the
face of the last human creature he had seen; the face of the boy that
he had shot down among the fern.

Why should this face grow before him wherever he turned, so that he
could not look on rock or sky without seeing it? Why should it glare at
him through a blood-red haze when he shut his eyes to keep it out, not
in sorrow, not in anger, but even as he had seen it last, expressing
only terror and pain, as the lad rolled off his horse, and lay a black
heap among the flowers? Up and away! anything is better than this. Let
us stumble away across the snow, through the mirk night once more,
rather than be driven mad by this pale boy's face.

Morning, and the pale ghosts have departed. Long shadows of horse and
man are thrown before him now, as the s