l in with my mood. More
welcome than the mocking sunshine were this cold and solemn light, this
deathlike silence, these ranged pines. It was a place in which to think
of life as a slight thing and scarcely worth the while, given without
the asking, spent in turmoil, strife, suffering, and longings all in
vain. Easily laid down, too,--so easily laid down that the wonder was--

I looked at the ghostly wood, and at the dull stream, and at my hand
upon the hilt of the sword that I had drawn halfway from the scabbard.
The life within that hand I had not asked for. Why should I stand like
a soldier left to guard a thing not worth the guarding; seeing
his comrades march homeward, hearing a cry to him from his distant
hearthstone?

I drew my sword well-nigh from its sheath; and then of a sudden I saw
the matter in a truer light; knew that I was indeed the soldier, and
willed to be neither coward nor deserter. The blade dropped back into
the scabbard with a clang, and, straightening myself, I walked on beside
the sluggish stream deep into the haunted wood.

Presently it occurred to me to glance aside at the Indian who had kept
pace with me through the forest. He was not there; he walked with me no
longer; save for myself there seemed no breathing creature in the dim
wood. I looked to right and left, and saw only the tall, straight pines
and the needle-strewn ground. How long he had been gone I could not
tell. He might have left me when first we came to the pines, for my
dreams had held me, and I had not looked his way.

There was that in the twilight place, or in the strangeness, the horror,
and the yearning that had kept company with me that day, or in the dull
weariness of a mind and body overwrought of late, which made thought
impossible. I went on down the stream toward the river, because it
chanced that my face was set in that direction.

How dark was the shadow of the pines, how lifeless the earth beneath,
how faint and far away the blue that showed here and there through rifts
in the heavy roof of foliage! The stream bending to one side I turned
with it, and there before me stood the minister!

I do not know what strangled cry burst from me. The earth was rocking,
all the wood a glare of light. As for him, at the sight of me and
the sound of my voice he had staggered back against a tree; but now,
recovering himself, he ran to me and put his great arms about me. "From
the power of the dog, from the lion's mouth," he