When my mind came back, it was with the consciousness of rain that was falling softly, and the cool drops plashed on my burning head with a sensation of relief that I cannot describe. I suffered from an intolerable thirst, and strove to rise that I might find means to quench it; but found I was powerless to move, and writhed in my agony in the rut amidst the corn-stalks wherein I had fallen. The rain was but a passing shower, and when it ceased a light but cool breeze sprang up. It was night, and a fitful moon shone through the uneasy clouds that hurried to and fro overhead in the uncertain breeze, which shifted its quarter as often as a child might change its mind. I seemed to be alive only in the head, and began to wonder to myself how long I was to lie there until death came, and with it the end of all things. I began to wish it would come quickly, and there was a secret whispering in my soul to pray--to pray to the God of whom I had never thought since childhood--to entreat that Invisible Being, at whose existence I had so often laughed, to stoop from above the stars and end my pain, and I cursed myself for a white-livered cur that forgot the Godhead in my strength, and in my weakness could almost have shrieked to him for help. I pulled my fainting courage up, as I thought that if there was no God, it was useless wasting my breath in calling on him, whilst if, on the other hand, there was one, no prayer of mine could go higher than my sword's point, were I to hold the blade out at arm's length above me--and now that the end was coming, I was not going to cringe and whimper. So my sinful pride caught me by the heel as I lay there in my dolour. A half-hour or so may have passed thus, and the moon was now almost entirely obscured. Occasionally I could hear through the darkness around me the moaning of some poor wounded wretch, and now and again rose the shrill discordant shriek of a maimed horse, an awful cry of pain, the effect of which those only who may have heard it can understand. Soon a number of twinkling lights began to hover over the plain. Sometimes they moved forward rapidly, sometimes they were raised and lowered, and at other times stationary. Gradually two of these lanthorns came closer to me, stopping about ten paces off, and when I saw who bore them I knew at once they were death-hunters, and that in a few moments the knife of one of these ghouls might end my suffering. There were two of these fiends, a man and a woman, and as they halted the man stooped: there was a choking cry for mercy, the blow of a dagger, and a groan. The robber busied himself in searching the dead man's person, and, in the silence that followed, the woman with him threw up her head and laughed a horrid shrill laugh. It pealed out with so eerie a sound that the death-hunter sprang to his feet; but finding who it was, burst into the foulest language. '_Sangdieu!_ Be still, fool,' he snarled, 'or you'll laugh another way if I tickle you with my knife.'