st was behind him--stealing upon him! He turned. All was dark in
the wood, but to his fancy the darkness here and there broke into pairs
of green eyes, and he had not the power even to raise his bow-hand from
his side. In the strength of despair he strove to rouse courage enough,
not to fight--that he did not even desire--but to run. Courage to flee
home was all he could even imagine, and it would not come. But what he
had not was ignominiously given him. A cry in the wood, half a screech,
half a growl, sent him running like a boar-wounded cur. It was not even
himself that ran, it was the fear that had come alive in his legs: he
did not know that they moved. But as he ran he grew able to run--gained
courage at least to be a coward. The stars gave a little light. Over the
grass he sped, and nothing followed him. "How fallen, how changed," from
the youth who had climbed the hill as the sun went down! A mere contempt
of himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it
contemned! There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped upon the
grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the
wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from
behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep
descent like a falling star. Instantly the whole upper country behind
him arose and pursued him! The wind came howling after him, filled with
screams, shrieks, yells, roars, laughter, and chattering, as if all the
animals of the forest were careering with it. In his ears was a
trampling rush, the thunder of the hoofs of the cattle, in career from
every quarter of the wide plains to the brow of the hill above him! He
fled straight for the castle, scarcely with breath enough to pant.

As he reached the bottom of the valley, the moon peered up over its
edge. He had never seen the moon before--except in the daytime, when he
had taken her for a thin bright cloud. She was a fresh terror to him--so
ghostly! so ghastly! so grewsome!--so knowing as she looked over the top
of her garden wall upon the world outside! That was the night itself!
the darkness alive--and after him! the horror of horrors coming down the
sky to curdle his blood, and turn his brain to a cinder! He gave a sob,
and made straight for the river, where it ran between the two walls, at
the bottom of the garden. He plunged in, struggled through, clambered up
the bank, and fell senseless on the grass.

XII.--