e dazzling emergence, and something, he
vaguely thought, of the character of silent menace and fury.

He had a confused recollection of having come there, or rather of
having been carried along, as if on men's shoulders, with a sort of
rushing motion. But it was utterly indistinct; the imperfect
recollection simply of a sensation. He had seen or heard nothing on
his way.

He looked round. There was not a sign of a living creature near. And
he began with a sense of awe to recognise the place.

The tree against which he had been leaning was one of the noble old
beeches that surround at irregular intervals the churchyard of
Shackleton, which spreads its green and wavy lap on the edge of the
Moor of Catstean, at the opposite side of which stands the rude
cottage in which he had just lost consciousness. It was six miles or
more across the moor to his habitation, and the black expanse lay
before him, disappearing dismally in the darkness. So that, looking
straight before him, sky and land blended together in an
undistinguishable and awful blank.

There was a silence quite unnatural over the place. The distant murmur
of the brook, which he knew so well, was dead; not a whisper in the
leaves about him; the air, earth, everything about and above was
indescribably still; and he experienced that quaking of the heart that
seems to portend the approach of something awful. He would have set
out upon his return across the moor, had he not an undefined
presentiment that he was waylaid by something he dared not pass.

The old grey church and tower of Shackleton stood like a shadow in the
rear. His eye had grown accustomed to the obscurity, and he could just
trace its outline. There were no comforting associations in his mind
connected with it; nothing but menace and misgiving. His early
training in his lawless calling was connected with this very spot.
Here his father used to meet two other poachers, and bring his son,
then but a boy, with him.

Under the church porch, towards morning, they used to divide the game
they had taken, and take account of the sales they had made on the
previous day, and make partition of the money, and drink their gin. It
was here he had taken his early lessons in drinking, cursing, and
lawlessness. His father's grave was hardly eight steps from the spot
where he stood. In his present state of awful dejection, no scene on
earth could have so helped to heighten his fear.

There was one object close by