The wind began to blow. It had a sharp edge of ice, and I shivered. Then I sprang up in fright as a great groan came down the cleft, passed me, and went on among the mountains, through valley and valley, between cliff and cliff, and from peak to peak. I knew, after my first start, what it was, but it frightened me as if it had been a ghost, though I am a full-grown man, and, as I said before, I think I have at least average courage. It was the wind, gathered and compressed in the narrow deep ravines between the tall cliffs, and driven on by other winds behind, until it cried out like a man in deadly pain. Not until then, when the mountains were awake and groaning, did I comprehend how deep and intense may become the sense of desolation. I had noticed the wonderful repetition of the echoes when I fired my rifle to attract the attention of the colonel, but at night these echoes were deepened and carried faster from peak to peak and ridge to ridge. As the wind gained in strength and swept through the trees and bushes on the slopes and crests as well as through the ravines and valleys, new tones were added, and I listened to the chorus of the mountains. The groan changed to a deep bass; with it were mingled the flutter and rustle of the dry leaves as the wind blew them together, leaf on leaf, and the higher note of a wandering breeze as it escaped from a ravine and swept triumphantly over ridge and peak. I was content to listen awhile to the music of the mountains, but I found that my joints were growing stiff with cold. One needs more than music, however sublime, on a dark night in November, unsheltered save by the skies. I took out some food, ate it, and resumed my journey without much courage, however, I will confess. My star was still there, but, like the moon, it was unsympathetic and cold, and it travelled due southwest as fast as I. I think I was a bit shaken by my situation and my inability to drive away the sense of desolation. It is easy enough to say that superstition and all such kindred things are folly, as perhaps they are; but put a man down where I was, let him go through what I had gone through, and he will have a ghost gibbering at him from every peak. So, when I saw a light flaming on a crest where no light had been before, I was not at all sure whether I saw it with eyes real or imaginary. It was no star; the flame was too bright, too red, and flickered too much, for that. Presently a light blazed up on another hill-top, and then on a third, and then on a fourth. They were moved about as if signalling to each other, and I was positive that I was growing light-headed. It would require no common, normal pair of eyes to see so many lights dancing a jig. All the hill-tops seemed to be afire, and I was quite sure that was not natural.