Through all the dash of the day, Ray had been in sparkling spirits, a very ecstasy of excitement, brimmed with an exuberance of valiant glee that played itself away in boyish freaks of daring and reckless acts of horsemanship.  Now a loftier mood had followed, and, still wrought to some extreme tension, full of blind anticipation and awful assurance, he sat between the camp-fires, his hands clasped over his knees, and watched the evening star where it hung in a cleft of the rocks and seemed like the advent of some great spirit of annunciation.  The tired horses had been staked out to graze, a temporary abatis erected, scouting-parties sent off in opposite directions, and at last the frosty air grew mild and mellow over the savory steam of broiling steaks and coffee smoking on beds of coals.  There was a moment’s lull in the hum of the little encampment, in all the jest and song and jingling stir of this scornfully intrepid company; perhaps for an instant the sense of the wilderness overawed them; perhaps it was only the customary precursor of increasing murmur;—­before leaving his place, Ray suddenly stooped and laid his ear on the earth.  There it was!  Far off, far off, the phantasmal stroke of hoofs, rapid, many, unswerving.  It had come,—­all that he had awaited,—­fate, or something else.  Low and clear in the distance one bugle blew blast of warning.  When he rose, the great yellow planet, wheeling slowly down the giant cleft in the rock, had vanished from sight.

Every man was on his feet, the place in alarum.  Behind and beside them loomed the precipice and the waterfall;—­there was surrender, there was conquest; there was no retreat.  The fires were extinguished, the breastworks strengthened, weapons adjusted, and all the ireful preparations for hasty battle made.  Then they expected their foe.  Slowly over the crown of the mountain above them an aurora crept and brandished its spears.

As they waited there those few breathless moments, Ray examined his rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to represent something sublime in its petty indifference.  He was stationed on the extreme left; near him the tumult of the torrent drowned much discordant noise, its fairy scarf forever forming and falling and floating on the evening air.  He thought of Vivia sitting far away and looking out upon the quiet starlight night; then he thought of swampy midnight lairs, with maddened men in fevered covert there,—­of little children crying for their mothers,—­of girls betrayed to hell,—­of flesh and blood at price,—­of blistering, crisping fagot and stake to-day,—­of all the anguish and despair down there before him.  And with the vivid sting of it such a wrath raged along his veins, such a holy fire, that it seemed there were no arms tremendous enough for his handling, through his shut teeth darted imprecatory prayers for the power of some almighty