But no, even now, the hush is broken. Out of the darkness it comes, mysterious, stirring, portentous,--the sound of a thousand years, the low insistent droning of a drum. Listening, the living hears its mournful, suggestive music, even as he heard it in the khans at Amasia. It rises, it falls, undulating. And if the dead hear, then is the call familiar,--the call of a far-off night, when, under almond blossom, a little white figure, dream-impelled, stepped towards the moonlit stream. Nearer it comes, nearer, nearer. The night winds bear it afar down the ravine; it is the music of war, the music of a thousand conquerors marching in brief glory out to the silence of death. Gently the living man lowers the dead from his arms. He rises to his feet, solitary and minute under the inquisition of the stars. The tethered horse on the highway stirs and whinnies. The transport column comes winding along the road of retreat. Nearer now, sound the drums; soon the riderless horse will be found. Suddenly, shattering the night, a shot rings out, doing violence to the quiet of the valley. The echo ricochets from hill-top to hill-top and faintly dies in the distance. The deep hush flows again, the eddies of sound fade out on the pool of silence. Over the grey crest of the eastern hills the moon climbs, pouring its light into the ravine. A jackal cries and slinks away among the scrub; and again, the insistent calling of a drum. THE END