On the theory of testing my nerves, in connection with the ghost theory, I at once resolved to dispense with the dogs, for their presence would have been companionship and a reliance apart from my individuality. My pistol was not taken for the ghosts, but for ghost-makers. Now that I reflect upon it all in my cooler moments, I must frankly admit that, after what had happened, this trip had something of the fearful in it, which my placid reader will not have the heart to deny, and nothing would induce me to repeat it, unless there were motives of a higher grade than those which ruled me then. It was, in fact, an enterprise totally at variance with common sense and common personal convenience and comfort. It was now about nine o’clock. No change had occurred in the shape of the night,—that is, no clouds had culminated in the skies, and yet no moon had been conjured up by astronomy, or by lovers’ incantations. It was a lonely walk down the hill, over the very spot where my silent visitor had so lately stood to look at these very woods,—that very spot to which my steps were now directed. Darker it was down in the valley, with the hill to my back and the great mass of foliage apparently near enough for me to touch; but on I went, giving no time for reconsideration, on to the fence which I crossed, and then I was one of the black things in the intense gloom of the forest. Not a sound but the crackling of dead branches under my feet in the pathway,—sounds that I felt might send the notice of my approach to whatever was waiting for me by the cross and the immortelle on the murder-rock. Though the broken branches were sentinelling my advent, I kept on, with a cold shiver now and then quivering all over me, but never for a moment going deeper than the skin. Brain and heart as yet were true to their purpose of folly, that seemed like madness to me then. It did not take me long to reach the objective point of my journey. I have described the spot in another part of this narrative, and therefore will not repeat its topographical characteristics; suffice to say that it was somewhat different in sentiment than when I had looked upon it in the sunshine. Then I had seen a visitor sitting quietly and unconcerned on the ridge of the rock, looking down, with a cigar between his lips, at the spot—always a thrilling sight—where the girl had fallen; and I had seen young girls munching sandwiches around the scene, and jabbering of the massacre of one of their mates; but now, with nothing there but the night and the spirit of the event, the weird-looking trees with their limbs reaching hither and thither in such a way as to make me feel that I was beneath the dome of an iron-barred prison-room. I hold it to be utterly impossible for any man, unless he is brutalized and of a sympathetic nature no higher than a quadruped, to be alone in such a place, with such a preface as it had been my fate to meet with, and not experience an accelerated throb of his pulse.