alley below.
McCraw, his white face bound with a bloody rag, drew his straight
claymore and wound the tattered tartan around his wrist, motioning Billy
Bones to ride on.

"March!" he cried, in his shrill voice, laying his claymore level; and
the long files moved off, spurs and scabbards clanking, horses crowding
and trampling in, faster and faster, till a far command set them
trotting, then galloping away into the west, where the kindling sky
reddened the world.

The world!--it would be the same to-morrow without me: that maple-tree
would not have changed a leaf; that tiny, hovering, gauze-winged
creature, drifting through the calm air, would be alive when I was dead.

It was difficult to understand. I repeated it to myself again and again,
but the phrases had no meaning to me.

The sun set; cool, violet lights lay over the earth; a thrush, awakened
by the sweetness of the twilight from his long summer moping, whistled
timidly, tentatively; then the silvery, evanescent notes floated away,
away, in endless, heavenly serenity.

A soft, leather-shod foot nudged me; I sat up, then rose, holding out
my wrists. They tied me loosely; a tall warrior stepped beside me;
others fell in behind with a patter of moccasined feet.

Then came an officer, pistol cocked and held muzzle up. He was the only
white man left.

"Forward," he said, nervously; and we started off through the purple
dusk.

Physical weariness and pain had left me; I moved as in a dream. Nothing
of apprehension or dismay disturbed the strange calm of my soul; even
desire for meditation left me; and a vague content wrapped me, mind
and body.

Distance, time, were meaningless to me now; I could go on forever; I
could lie down forever; nothing mattered; nothing could touch me now.

The moon came up, flooding the woods with a creamy light; then a little
stream, sparkling like molten silver, crossed our misty path; then a
bare hill-side stretched away, pale in the moonlight, vanishing into a
luminous veil of vapor, floating over a hollow where unseen water lay.

We entered a grove of still trees standing wide apart--maple-trees, with
the sap-pegs still in the bark. I sat down on a log; the Indians seated
themselves in a wide circle around me; the renegade officer walked to
the fringe of trees and stood there motionless.

Time passed serenely; I had fallen drowsing, soothed by the silvered
silence; when through a dream I heard a cock-crow.

Around me the I