to the face of the landscape; when the
exhalations of the marsh were sluggishly spreading a vaporous heaviness
over the lowland; while the eerie habitants of the bog (whose time of
sleep is by day, their active life at night) the millions of frogs and
other creatures were reechoing their cries, announcing the whereabouts
of the slimy pools, where foul gases are lord and master; when the
he-wolf was howling to his comrades; and when, all at once, some
mysterious-faced cloud drew out before the moon, and whispered to her
something that made all nature tremble, so that for one moment all was
silent, a death-like silence, more terrible than all the night voices
speaking at once;--at such a time whose steps were those that sounded in
the depths of the morass?

A horseman was making his way by the moonlight, in solitude.

His steed struggled along up to the hocks in the swamp which showed no
paths at all; the tracks were immediately sucked up by the mud:--nothing
lay before to show the way, save the broken reed. No sign remained that
anyone had ever passed there before.

The sagacious mare carefully noted the marks from time to time,
instinctively scenting the route, that tracks trodden by wild beasts
should not lead her astray; cleverly she picked out with her sharp eyes
the places where the ground was still firm; at times she would leap from
one clod of peat to another. The space between these spots might be
overgrown by green grass, with yellow flowers dotted here and there, but
the sagacious animal knew, felt, perhaps had even experienced, that the
depth there was deceptive; it was one of those peat-diggings, filled in
by mud and overgrown by the green of water-moss; he who stepped thereon
would be swallowed up in an instant. Then she trotted on picking her way
among the dangerous places.

And the rider?

He was asleep.

Asleep on horseback, while his steed was going with him through an
accursed spot: where to right and left were graves, where below was hell
and around him the gloom of night. The horseman was sleeping, his head
nodding backwards and forwards, swaying to and fro. Sometimes he
started, as those who travel in carriages are wont to do when the
jolting is more pronounced than ordinary, and then settled down again.
Though asleep he kept his seat as if he had grown to the saddle. His
hands seemed wide awake for all he held the reins in one and a
double-barrelled gun in the other.

By the light of the m