Byring suddenly became conscious of a pain in his right hand.  He withdrew his eyes from his enemy and looked at it.  He was grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so tightly that it hurt him.  He observed, too, that he was leaning forward in a strained attitude—­ crouching like a gladiator ready to spring at the throat of an antagonist.  His teeth were clenched and he was breathing hard.  This matter was soon set right, and as his muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath he felt keenly enough the ludicrousness of the incident.  It affected him to laughter.  Heavens! what sound was that? what mindless devil was uttering an unholy glee in mockery of human merriment?  He sprang to his feet and looked about him, not recognizing his own laugh.

He could no longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was thoroughly frightened!  He would have run from the spot, but his legs refused their office; they gave way beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling.  His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill perspiration.  He could not even cry out.  Distinctly he heard behind him a stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and dared not look over his shoulder.  Had the soulless living joined forces with the soulless dead?—­was it an animal?  Ah, if he could but be assured of that!  But by no effort of will could he now unfix his gaze from the face of the dead man.

I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a brave and intelligent man.  But what would you have?  Shall a man cope, single-handed, with so monstrous an alliance as that of night and solitude and silence and the dead,—­while an incalculable host of his own ancestors shriek into the ear of his spirit their coward counsel, sing their doleful death-songs in his heart, and disarm his very blood of all its iron?  The odds are too great—­courage was not made for so rough use as that.

One sole conviction now had the man in possession:  that the body had moved.  It lay nearer to the edge of its plot of light—­there could be no doubt of it.  It had also moved its arms, for, look, they are both in the shadow!  A breath of cold air struck Byring full in the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred and moaned.  A strongly defined shadow passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half obscured.  The horrible thing was visibly moving!  At that moment a single shot rang out upon the picket-line—­a lonelier and louder, though more distant, shot than ever had been heard by mortal ear!  It broke the spell of that enchanted man; it slew the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering host from Central Asia and released his modern manhood.  With a cry like that of some great bird pouncing upon its prey he sprang forward, hot-hearted for action!