NIGHT IN THE FOREST. 273 



finer, and faster, but none reached me as I sat in my 

 shelter, open indeed on one side, but fully protected there 

 by a fire built at a safe distance, which blazed as a pile 

 should blaze that was the funeral pyre of more than one 

 of the forest giants. 



" And now the sound of the wind in the forest grew ter- 

 rible in the grandeur of its harmonies. A lonesome man, 

 far from my fellows, the sole human companion of the 

 storm, the sole human witness of the fury of the tempest, 

 I sat, or lay, half-reclined on the heap of brush that I had 

 gathered for a bed, and with my hand screening my face 

 from the intense heat of the fire, looked out into the abyss 

 of darkness, and watched the snow-flakes driving from far 

 up down toward the flames, as if they sought instantane- 

 ous and glad relief from cold and wretched wanderings ; 

 and I wondered whether, of intelligent creatures, I was 

 alone in that wild, grand, and magnificent scene. 



" Sometimes I thought I could hear human voices in 

 the lull of the storm ; but oftener I imagined that the in- 

 habitants of other worlds were near, and that they were 

 unearthly sounds which were so strange and abrupt and 

 startling ; and when I closed my eyes I was certain 

 that, among all the confusion, I could hear the rushing 

 wings of more than ten legions of angels ; and in a mo- 

 ment of still calm, one of those awful pauses that occur in 

 furious storms, in the deep, solemn silence I heard a cry, 

 a faint but wild and mournful cry, and it seemed far off, 

 farther than the forest, farther than the opposite mount- 

 ain, beyond the confines of the world, and the cry grew 

 into a wail — a wail of unutterable anguish, agony, and 

 woe — such a wail as might have been Eve's when the 

 flaming sword flashed between her and Abel ; and it 

 came nearer, nearer, nearer, and it filled the air, the sky, 



S 



