_The broken memory of a tale told in the last hours of a summer's night to the old Mexican priest by a dying wanderer from the Spanish Americas. Much the father marvelled at the quaintness of the accent of the man? which was the quaintness of dead centuries_... Now the land of which I tell thee is a low land, where all things seem to have remained unchanged since the beginning of the world,--a winterless land where winds are warm and weak, so that the leaves are not moved by them,--a beshadowed land that ever seemeth to mourn with a great mourning. For it is one mighty wold, and the trees there be all hung with drooping plants and drooling vines, and dribbling mossy things that pend queerly from the uppermost branchings even to the crankling roots. And there be birds in that wold which do sing only when the moon shineth full,--and they have voices, like to monks,--and measured is their singing, and solemn, and of vasty sound,--and they are not at all afraid. But when the sun shineth there prevaileth such quiet as if some mighty witchcraft weighed upon the place; and all things drowse in the great green silence. Now on the night of which I tell thee, we had camped there; and it seemed to me that we might in sooth have voyaged beyond the boundaries of the world; for even the heavens were changed above us, and the stars were not the same; and I could not sleep for thinking of the strangeness of the land and of the sky. And about the third watch I rose and went out under those stars, and looked at them, and listened to the psalmody of the wonderful birds chanting in the night like friars. Then a curious desire to wander alone into the deep woods came upon me.--_En chica hora Dios obra_!--In that time I feared neither man nor devil; and our commander held me the most desperate in that desperate band; and I strode out of the camp without thought of peril. The grizzled sentry desired to question me;--I cursed him and passed on.