"Tom, if you will hold the horses, Captain Mallender can come with me. Please to follow," commanded the young lady, as soon as she had alighted. "You may hear nothing, as you are so unbelieving, but again, you may hear something that you will never forget."
After they had walked about a hundred yards, she turned abruptly to face her companion, and said:
"Now, you must take off your cap and kneel down here and listen." As she spoke, she sank bareheaded on the sand, and without a word, Mallender meekly followed her example.
What an extraordinary girl! Was she playing him a trick? Tara was given to mild practical jokes, but it was going rather too far; to bring him fifteen miles, and plant him on his knees in the middle of an empty plain. For some time there was no sound, beyond the impatient stamping of the horses and jingling of their bits, and at the end of ten minutes Mallender ventured a protest.
"I say, Miss Tara, is not this getting a bit monotonous? I expect they have another engagement."
"Hush! Hush!" she answered authoritatively. "Don't speak! Wait!—They—are coming."
Mallender was inclined to whistle, "The Campbells are coming," but was afraid of the young lady's displeasure. Her occasional air of aloofness and command impressed and surprised, though it entirely failed to crush him.
What an awful ass he must look! Why was not Tom roaring with laughter? As he bent his head nearer to the ground, a noxious carrion bird swept so obtrusively close to him that he started involuntarily, and was sensible of an extraordinary sensation of sickening repulsion. What was that? A bugle-call! Yes, he heard it distinctly; from the far distance came another, immediately followed by a brisk roll of drums, then drums and fifes—accompanied by the tramp and thunder of an approaching host. The ground seemed to tremble and vibrate under the tread of a large body of troops who were rapidly advancing,—and yet, amazing sensation, these troops were nowhere to be seen.
Mallender stared about in stupefied bewilderment; not a soldier was visible, merely the empty moon-flooded plains, that appeared to be suddenly bereft of all warmth and life—and although there was not a breath of wind, the long grass and cotton plants, were shivering.—Why? As gradually as they approached, so gradually did the sound of tramping feet become fainter, yet fainter, and finally died away; one far-distant bugle-call sounded a piercing, lingering, almost agonized challenge—then followed complete, absolute, and ghastly silence.
Geoffrey Mallender was sensible of being unaccountably chilled and overawed; he felt as if he had suddenly stirred the springs of some obscure dread—had been brought to the edge of another sphere! Possibly the experience would pass, would soon be explained, derided, and forgotten; but for a moment this glimpse of the unknown had made his heart beat unusually fast, and his dark hair to lie in damp rings upon his clammy forehead. As he rose hastily to his feet and looked at his companion, Tara's hands dropped from her face, her great grey eyes were fixed upon him with an expression of awe, as they confronted one another in the mystic brilliancy of moonlight. At last she said: