Night came on fast.  The red sun shot down.  Darkness fell upon the forest, and swept up to the circling rim of the camp fire.  Chill came into the air.  The Spaniards shivered and crept a little nearer to the coals.  Talk ceased, and, out of the illimitable forest, came the low, moaning sound of the wind among the leaves.  The great stars sprang out, and shone with a thin, pale light on the wilderness.

Francisco Alvarez was a brave man, but he was born on sunny plains where he basked in warmth and the eye ranged far.  Now, despite himself, he felt a chill that was uncanny.  The forest, thick and black, spread away, he knew, for hundreds of miles, and neither city nor town broke it.  A fervent imagination leaped up and peopled it with weird beings.  Nor would imagination go down before will and knowledge.  Boughs twisted themselves into fantastic, hideous shapes, and the moan of the wind was certainly like the cry of a soul in torment.

Don Francisco Alvarez shivered and the shiver became a shudder.  He looked across the fire at his prisoner, but Paul seemed unconscious of the forest and the night, and the demon spell of the two.  The lad sat immovable.  Upon his face was the dreamy, mystic look that so often came there.  He seemed to be gazing far beyond the Spaniard and the renegade into some greater future.

Francisco Alvarez, brave man though he was, felt awe.  He rose impatiently, kicked a coal deeper into the fire, looked once more at Paul, who was yet silent, and spoke sharply to the sentinels.  Then he returned to his place, and said to Paul: 

“We offer you the hospitality of the forest and an extra blanket if you wish it.”

“It’s a hospitality to which I’m used,” replied Paul, “and I don’t need the extra blanket, although I thank you for the offer.”

He took his own blanket from the little roll at his back, wrapped himself in it, pillowed his head on the knoll, and closed his eyes.  Francisco Alvarez looked at him for some minutes, and could not tell whether he was sleeping or waking, but he thought that he slept.  His long, regular breathing and the expression of his face, as peaceful as that of a little child, indicated It.

The night grew chillier.  The great stars remained pale and cold, and the forest continued to whine, as that strange, wandering breeze slipped through the leaves.  Francisco Alvarez of the sunny plains wished that it would stop.  It got upon his nerves, and the feeling it gave him was singularly like that of an evil conscience.  He saw his men fall to sleep one by one, and he heard their heavy breathing.  Braxton Wyatt also wrapped himself in his blanket and soon slumbered.  The fire sank, the coals crumbled, and with soft little hisses, fell together.  The circling rim of darkness crept up closer and closer, and the trunks of the trees became ghostly in the shadows.