A terrible silence fell upon the whole assembly, as the idea that they had been contending with demons, and not with mortals, fell upon them, and perhaps the bravest would have hesitated to enter the forest that night, however dire the need. The baron knew this; yet when supper was over, when the hour of retiring to rest had arrived, and still there were no signs of his son, he selected a band of trusty warriors, who, in spite of the story of the demons, which Eustace's men had made known throughout the castle, would not be untrue to their lord. And with these men, while all the rest slept, he penetrated the forest, and with torches and horns made night hideous, until cold and fatigue drove him home, his heart heavier than before, his desire unaccomplished. He threw himself upon his couch, only to be haunted by dreadful dreams, in which he saw his son surrounded by the demons of Sir Eustace's tale, and in every other variety of danger or distress, like the constantly shifting scenes of a modern theatre. And in all these dreams the "Dismal Swamp" played a prominent part. Day broke at last, cold but bright; the first beams of the sun gladdened the castle, reflected keenly from the white ground, the trees hung with frozen snow, which had broken many branches to the ground--the winter seemed to have come in good earnest. Early in the day, a hundred men, well armed and mounted, led by the baron, again entered the forest. They reached, in due course, the part of the wood assigned to Etienne on the previous day. The snow had effaced all tracks, but Sir Eustace speedily found the spot where he had left the dead man, and there was the corpse, stiff and frozen, but it was evident that the knight's description given the previous evening was all too correct. The man had died in great horror and anguish; the arrow yet remained in his body. It was, as in the earlier cases, one of English make--a clumsy shaft, unlike the polished Norman workmanship. "We must search the whole district," said the baron; "but we had better keep together." Every one shared this opinion. It was the unknown danger that troubled them, the thought that supernatural powers were arrayed against them, that the English had called the fiends to their aid, which terrified these hardened warriors. If the English had, indeed, sought by ghostly disguise to affright their foes, they had well succeeded. It was late in the morning before the glade was reached where our party had rested, and the body of the man first slain was discovered, and the whole band gathered around it. Like the others, he had fallen by an English arrow. The fear that all their friends had thus fallen became general, and expressed itself in their countenances. The baron was livid.