A wounded man lay all night in Devil’s Den. There were other wounded there, but the great boulders hid them from one another. This man lay in a rocky angle, upon the overhanging lip of the place. Below him, smoke clung like a cerement to the far-flung earth. For a time smoke was about him, thick in his nostrils. For a time it hid the sky. But now all firing was stayed, the night was wheeling on, and the smoke lifted. Below, vague in the night-time, were seen flickering lights—torches, he knew, ambulances, litter-bearers, lifting, serving one in a hundred. They were far away, scattered over the stricken field. They would not come up here to Devil’s Den. He knew they would not come, and he watched them as the shipwrecked watch the sail upon the horizon that has not seen their signal, and that will not see it. He, shipwrecked here, had waved no cloth, but, idle as it was, he had tried to shout. His voice had fallen like a broken-winged bird. Now he lay, in a pool of his own blood, not greatly in pain, but dying. Presently he grew light-headed, though not so much so but that he knew that he was light-headed, and could from time to time reason with his condition. He was a reading man, and something of a thinker, and now his mind in its wanderings struck into all manner of by-paths. For a time he thought that the field below was the field of Waterloo. He remembered seeing, while it was yet light, a farmhouse, a distant cluster of buildings with a frightened air. “La Belle Alliance,” he thought, “or Hougomont—which?—These Belgians planted a lot of wheat, and now there are red poppies all through it.—Where is Ney and his cavalry?—No, Stuart and his cavalry—” His mind righted for a moment. “This is a long battle, and a long night. Come, Death! Come, Death!” The shadowy line of boulders became a line of Deaths, tall, draped figures bearing scythes. Three Deaths, then a giant hour-glass, then three Deaths, then the hour-glass. He stared, fascinated. “Which scythe? The one that starts out of line—now if I can keep them still in line—just so long will I live!” He stared for a while, till the Deaths became boulders again and his fingers fell to playing with the thickening blood on the ground beside him. A meteor pierced the night—a white fire-ball thrown from the ramparts of the sky. He seemed to be rushing with it, rushing, rushing, rushing,—a rushing river. There was a heavy sound. As his head sank back he saw again the line of Deaths, and the one that left the line. Below, through the night, the wind that blew over the wheat-fields and the meadows, the orchards and the woods, was a moaning wind. It was a wind with a human voice.