The shadows lengthened, the sun declined and set, and an ominous glare spread over the sky behind them. And the impression began to grow on both of them that the sheep were constantly more hard to control. They kept dipping into the little glens and draws on each side of their valley; they bunched uneasily, then spread out into little scurrying groups. Their sense of unity seemed lost, and more than once only a quick word, a sharp command, a swift dash about the flanks of the flock kept them from a panic. They did not keep the even gait by which sheep usually move. Sometimes they ran and sometimes stopped, milling. “I don’t understand,” Alice told Hugh, in an instant when they were within speaking range of each other. “Sheep usually know what to do better than their herders. And it looks as if they’d run straight away from the fire.” It was true. Even the domestic sheep have not lost all their powers of instinct, and every herder knows that this inner knowledge is often more to be relied upon than his own intelligence. The flocks usually know what is best for them. And many a time a wise and experienced herder will come racing his flocks down from the higher levels just in time to escape a blizzard—without a word of forecast from the weather man. He has simply followed the sheep who in turn have obeyed their own instincts. And Hugh, too, found himself wondering why the flocks seemed so reluctant to flee down into the valley. It was true that their course led them to a narrow pass, bound on each side by steep cliffs and impassable walls of brush, but the flock could pass through with ease. It looked to him as if the sheep did not themselves know where they wished to go, but were undeniably uneasy and vacillating. The thought haunted Hugh, returning again and again, and filling him with a vague discomfort and dread. There would be light to travel by to-night. The glare in the sky behind them ever brightened, and the eyes kept seeking it with an irresistible apprehension. It cast a red glow over the whole forest world. The warm color deepened as the night encroached upon the twilight, and all semblance of reality faded from the land. It was as if it had been dipped in red wine. The great trees were incarnadine, the canyons swam in red vapor, even the sheep had red wool. No longer was this the green and lovely mountain realm they had known. Rather it was an inferno of mythology, an underworld lighted by sulphurous fires.