Then, for lack of breath, ensued a silence, at the deepest point of which, tickled by the oddity of surprising my grave associates in this masquerading trim, I could not possibly refrain from a burst of laughter on my own separate account;

“Hush!” I heard the pretty gypsy fortuneteller say.  “Who is that laughing?”

“Some profane intruder!” said the goddess Diana.  “I shall send an arrow through his heart, or change him into a stag, as I did Actaeon, if he peeps from behind the trees!”

“Me take his scalp!” cried the Indian chief, brandishing his tomahawk, and cutting a great caper in the air.

“I’ll root him in the earth with a spell that I have at my tongue’s end!” squeaked Moll Pitcher.  “And the green moss shall grow all over him, before he gets free again!”

“The voice was Miles Coverdale’s,” said the fiendish fiddler, with a whisk of his tail and a toss of his horns.  “My music has brought him hither.  He is always ready to dance to the Devil’s tune!”

Thus put on the right track, they all recognized the voice at once, and set up a simultaneous shout.

“Miles!  Miles!  Miles Coverdale, where are you?” they cried.  “Zenobia!  Queen Zenobia! here is one of your vassals lurking in the wood.  Command him to approach and pay his duty!”

The whole fantastic rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so that I was like a mad poet hunted by chimeras.  Having fairly the start of them, however, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their merriment and riot at a good distance in the rear.  Its fainter tones assumed a kind of mournfulness, and were finally lost in the hush and solemnity of the wood.  In my haste, I stumbled over a heap of logs and sticks that had been cut for firewood, a great while ago, by some former possessor of the soil, and piled up square, in order to be carted or sledded away to the farmhouse.  But, being forgotten, they had lain there perhaps fifty years, and possibly much longer; until, by the accumulation of moss, and the leaves falling over them, and decaying there, from autumn to autumn, a green mound was formed, in which the softened outline of the woodpile was still perceptible.  In the fitful mood that then swayed my mind, I found something strangely affecting in this simple circumstance.  I imagined the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and children, coming out of their chill graves, and essaying to make a fire with this heap of mossy fuel!

From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost in reverie, and neither knew nor cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, well-remembered voice spoke, at a little distance.

“There is Mr. Coverdale!”

“Miles Coverdale!” said another voice,—­and its tones were very stern.  “Let him come forward, then!”

“Yes, Mr. Coverdale,” cried a woman’s voice,—­clear and melodious, but, just then, with something unnatural in its chord,—­“you are welcome!  But you come half an hour too late, and have missed a scene which you would have enjoyed!”