“‘Sounded like sighing, groaning, and so on?’ he said, repeating my words, and shifting uneasily from one foot to another. He was cold, horribly cold. ‘Was that all?’
“‘Yes, of course. Why ask?’ I replied. Then I laughed. This stupid, sturdy son of toil had been scared; to him the sounds had been those of his moorland bogies—things he had dreaded in his infancy. I told him so. He didn’t like to hear me make fun of him. He didn’t like my laugh, and he persisted: ‘Was that all you heard?’
“Then I grew impatient, and asked him to explain what he meant.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘I thought I heard a scream,—a cry. Just as if some one had jumped out on some one else and taken them unawares. Maybe it was the wind—only the wind. But it had an eerie sound.’
“The man was nervous. The storm had frightened away whatever little wit he may have possessed.
“‘Come, let us be going,’ I said, moving off in the direction of the wall. I wanted to find a new exit; I was tired of paths.
“The man kept close to me. I could hear his teeth chatter. Accidentally his hand brushed against mine. His flesh was icy cold. He gave a cry as if a snake had bitten him. Then the truth flashed through me. The man was mad. His terror, his strange manner of showing it, and now this sudden shrinking from me revealed it all—he was mad—the moon and trees had done their work.
“‘I’m not going that way,’ he said, ‘come along with me. I want to see which of the trees it was that cried.’
“His voice was changed; he seemed suddenly to have grown stranger. There was no insanity in his tone now. But I knew the cunning of the insane, and I feared to anger him, so I acquiesced. What an idea! One of the trees had cried! Did he mean the wind?
“He grew sullen when I jeered at him. He led me to a little hollow in the ground, and I noticed the prints of several feet in the wet mud. Then I saw something which sent the cold blood to my heart. A woman bathed in blood lay before me. Somehow she was familiar to me. I looked again—then again. Yes, there was the dark shawl, the basket—broken, it was true, with the contents scattered; but it was the same basket. It was the woman I had seen coming down the road.