g from garment and flesh together,
stood bare and lank amid the decay that littered the floor. A faint
rattling shiver went through the naked company; pair after pair
the lamping eyes went out; and the darkness grew round me with the
loneliness. For a moment the leaves were still swept fluttering all one
way; then the wind ceased, and the owl floated silent through the silent
night.

Not for a moment had I been afraid. It is true that whoever would cross
the threshold of any world, must leave fear behind him; but, for myself,
I could claim no part in its absence. No conscious courage was operant
in me; simply, I was not afraid. I neither knew why I was not afraid,
nor wherefore I might have been afraid. I feared not even fear--which of
all dangers is the most dangerous.

I went out into the wood, at once to resume my journey. Another moon was
rising, and I turned my face toward it.

CHAPTER XVII. A GROTESQUE TRAGEDY

I had not gone ten paces when I caught sight of a strange-looking
object, and went nearer to know what it might be. I found it a
mouldering carriage of ancient form, ruinous but still upright on its
heavy wheels. On each side of the pole, still in its place, lay the
skeleton of a horse; from their two grim white heads ascended the
shrivelled reins to the hand of the skeleton-coachman seated on his
tattered hammer-cloth; both doors had fallen away; within sat two
skeletons, each leaning back in its corner.

Even as I looked, they started awake, and with a cracking rattle of
bones, each leaped from the door next it. One fell and lay; the other
stood a moment, its structure shaking perilously; then with difficulty,
for its joints were stiff, crept, holding by the back of the carriage,
to the opposite side, the thin leg-bones seeming hardly strong enough to
carry its weight, where, kneeling by the other, it sought to raise it,
almost falling itself again in the endeavour.

The prostrate one rose at length, as by a sudden effort, to the sitting
posture. For a few moments it turned its yellowish skull to this side
and that; then, heedless of its neighbour, got upon its feet by grasping
the spokes of the hind wheel. Half erected thus, it stood with its back
to the other, both hands holding one of its knee-joints. With little
less difficulty and not a few contortions, the kneeling one rose next,
and addressed its companion.

"Have you hurt yourself, my lord?" it said, in a voice that sounded
far-off,