He was alone as utterly as though all the world were dead. It was still barely midnight when he saw the bell-tower on high looming darker than the dark clouds about it, and the pine-trees and the presbytery and the walls of the burial-ground gathered round it black and gaunt, their shapes all fused together in one heap of gloom. The guardians of the place, old men who went early to their beds, were sleeping somewhere under those black roofs against the tower. Below, the hills and valleys were all wrapped in the silence of the country night. On some far road a tired team of charcoal-bearing mules might be treading woefully to the swing of their heavy bells, or some belated string of wine-carts might be creeping carefully through the darkness, the men half-drunk and their beasts half-asleep. But there was no sound or sign of them in the vast brooding stillness which covered like great soft wings the peaceful hills overlapping one another, and the serenity of the mountains bathed in the rays of the moon. There was no sound anywhere: not even the bleat of a sheep from the flocks, nor the bark of a dog from the homesteads. Caris crossed himself, and mounted the steep path which led to the church-gate. The last time he had come thither he had climbed up with the weight of his mother's coffin on his shoulders; the ascent being too steep for a mule to mount and he too poor to pay for assistance. The walls of the graveyard were high, and the only access to it was through a wooden iron-studded door, which had on one side of it a little hollowed stone for holy water, and above it a cross of iron and an iron crown. To force the door was impossible; to climb the wall was difficult, but he was agile as a wild cat, and accustomed to crawl up the stems of the pines to gather their cones, and the smooth trunks of the poplars in the valleys to lop their crowns. He paused a moment, feeling the cold dews run like rain off his forehead, and wished that his dog was with him, a childish wish, for the dog could not have climbed: then he kicked off his boots, set his toe-nails in the first crevice in the brick surface, and began to mount with his hands and feet with prehensile agility. In a few moments he was above on the broad parapet which edged the wall, and could look down into the burial-place below. But he did not dare to look; he shut his eyes convulsively and began to descend, holding by such slight aids as the uneven surface and the projecting lichens afforded him. He dropped at last roughly but safely on the coarse grass within the enclosure. All was black and still; the graveyard was shut in on three sides by its walls, and at the fourth side by the tower of the church. The moon had passed behind a cloud and he could see nothing.