* * * * *
There was silence on God's Little Mountain for a space.
Afterwards a voice, awful and piercing, deep with unutterable horror—the voice of a soul driven mad by torture—clutched the heart of every man and woman. Even the hounds, raging on the quarry edge, cowered and bristled.
It echoed in the freezing arches of the sky, and rolled back unanswered to the freezing earth. The little cleric, who had pulled a Prayer-Book from his pocket, dropped it.
Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion—fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes:
'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!'