My blood tingled yet with the strange fire; my mind ran in a tumult of high resolves of which I understood neither the end nor the present meaning, but only that the world had on a sudden become my battlefield, that the fight was mine, and at all cost the victory must be mine.  It was, if I may say it without blasphemy, as if my friend’s blood had baptized me into his faith; and I saw life and death with new eyes.

Yet, for the moment, in finding passion I had also found self; and shame of this self dragged down my elation.  I had sprung to my feet in wild rage against Nat’s murder; I had spoken words—­fierce, unpremeditated words—­which, beginning in a boyish defiance, had ended on a note which, though my own lips uttered it, I heard as from a trumpet sounding close and yet calling afar.  In a minute or so it had happened, and behold!  I that, sitting beside Nat, should have been terribly alone, was not alone, for my new-found self sat between us, intruding on my sorrow.

I declare now with shame, as it abased me then, that for hours, while the darkness fell and the stars began their march over the tree-tops, the ghostly intruder kept watch with me as a bodily presence mocking us both, benumbing my efforts to sorrow. . . .  Nor did it fade until calm came to me, recalled by the murmur of unseen waters.  Listening to them I let my thoughts travel up to the ridges and forth into that unconfined world of which Nat’s spirit had been made free. . . .  I went to the hut for a pail, groped my way to the stream, and fetched water to prepare his body for burial.  When I returned the hateful presence had vanished.  My eyes went up to a star—­love’s planet—­poised over the dark boughs.  Thither and beyond it Nat had travelled.  Through those windows he would henceforth look back and down on me; never again through the eyes I had loved as a friend and lived to close.  I could weep now, and I wept; not passionately, not selfishly, but in grief that seemed to rise about me like a tide and bear me and all fate of man together upon its deep, strong flood. . . .

At daybreak Marc’antonio and Stephanu came down the pass and found me digging the grave.  I thought at first that they intended me some harm, for their faces were ill-humoured enough in all conscience; but they carried each a spade, and after growling a salutation, set down their guns and struck in to help me with my work.

We had been digging, maybe, for twenty minutes, and in silence, when my ear caught the sound of furious grunting from the sty, where I had penned the hogs overnight, a little before sundown.  Nat had watched me as I numbered them, and it seemed now so long ago that I glanced up with a start almost guilty, as though in my grief I had neglected the poor brutes for days.  In fact I had kept them in prison for a short hour beyond their usual time, and some one even now was liberating them.

It was the Princess, of whose presence I had not been aware.  She stood by the gate of the pen, her head and shoulders in sunlight, while the hogs raced in shadow past her feet.