'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'Open your eyes and stand up.'
The night had fallen; but it was not the comfortable night that
soothes the troubled minds of mortal men; it was a night that
agitated the soul mysteriously so that each nerve in the body
tingled. There was a lurid darkness which displayed and yet
distorted the objects that surrounded them. No moon shone in the
sky, but small stars appeared to dance on the heather, vague
night-fires like spirits of the damned. They stood in a vast and
troubled waste, with huge stony boulders and leafless trees, rugged
and gnarled like tortured souls in pain. It was as if there had
been a devastating storm, and the country reposed after the flood
of rain and the tempestuous wind and the lightning. All things
about them appeared dumbly to
