After a long time I
penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was
brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all
motionless. I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the
world, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols. I
presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that
had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight
enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a
tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and
there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I
had stopped--_why_ I do not recollect--perhaps thinking that if I was
not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my
way out. And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising
insect trawled near my ear its lonely drone.
Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started.
I imagined--I dreamed--that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss and
violets, _recently made!_ And while I stood gloating upon that
impossible thing, I imagined--I dreamed--the lunacy of it!--that I heard
a laugh.
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