le; for now the mist was rolling
off, and we were against the sky-line to the dark cavalcade below us.
John lay on the ground by a barrow of heather, where a little gullet
was, and I crept to him, afraid of the noise I made in dragging my legs
along, and the creak of my cord breeches. John bleated like a sheep to
cover it--a sheep very cold and trembling.

Then just as the foremost horseman passed, scarce twenty yards below us,
a puff of wind came up the glen, and the fog rolled off before it. And
suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight downwards, spread
like fingers over the moorland, opened the alleys of darkness, and hung
on the steel of the riders.

'Dunkery Beacon,' whispered John, so close into my ear, that I felt his
lips and teeth ashake; 'dursn't fire it now except to show the Doones
way home again, since the naight as they went up and throwed the
watchmen atop of it. Why, wutt be 'bout, lad? God's sake--'

For I could keep still no longer, but wriggled away from his arm, and
along the little gullet, still going flat on my breast and thighs, until
I was under a grey patch of stone, with a fringe of dry fern round it;
there I lay, scarce twenty feet above the heads of the riders, and I
feared to draw my breath, though prone to do it with wonder.

For now the beacon was rushing up, in a fiery storm to heaven, and the
form of its flame came and went in the folds, and the heavy sky was
hovering. All around it was hung with red, deep in twisted columns, and
then a giant beard of fire streamed throughout the darkness. The sullen
hills were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and
all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.

But most of all the flinging fire leaped into the rocky mouth of the
glen below me, where the horsemen passed in silence, scarcely deigning
to look round. Heavy men and large of stature, reckless how they bore
their guns, or how they sate their horses, with leathern jerkins, and
long boots, and iron plates on breast and head, plunder heaped behind
their saddles, and flagons slung in front of them; I counted more than
thirty pass, like clouds upon red sunset. Some had carcasses of sheep
swinging with their skins on, others had deer, and one had a child flung
across his saddle-bow. Whether the child were dead, or alive, was more
than I could tell, only it hung head downwards there, and must take the
chance of it. They had got the child, a very young o