As he pressed forward he became conscious that his way was haunted by invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind.  From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood.  They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against his body and soul.

It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow.  A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam.  He stooped and plunged his hand into it.  It stained his fingers; it was blood!  Blood, he then observed, was about him everywhere.  The weeds growing rankly by the roadside showed it in blots and splashes on their big, broad leaves.  Patches of dry dust between the wheelways were pitted and spattered as with a red rain.  Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage.

All this he observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation.  It seemed to him that it was all in expiation of some crime which, though conscious of his guilt, he could not rightly remember.  To the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings the consciousness was an added horror.  Vainly he sought by tracing life backward in memory, to reproduce the moment of his sin; scenes and incidents came crowding tumultuously into his mind, one picture effacing another, or commingling with it in confusion and obscurity, but nowhere could he catch a glimpse of what he sought.  The failure augmented his terror; he felt as one who has murdered in the dark, not knowing whom nor why.  So frightful was the situation - the mysterious light burned with