on the
night. Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less
remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause
and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it.
We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road
plunged us at once into almost solid darkness--darkness that was
packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We groped
along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and
more distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more and
more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of
lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the
lead. I ran against something--a soft heavy something which gave,
slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the
lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing
face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! That is,
it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a grewsome sight.
Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and
the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge.
No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that
there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning came
quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and
midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an
intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness.
I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected.

"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to
his lord; so let him be. If others hanged him, belike they had
the right--let him hang."

"But--"

"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet another
reason. When the lightning cometh again--there, look abroad."

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk.
They are past thanking you. Come--it is unprofitable to tarry here."

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next
mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning,
and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur
no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. A man came flying
by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him.
They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred,
and then another and another. Then a sudden turn of the road