The night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch labored

Slowly on. He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat down to rest

He was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. All his sensations and

Experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the empty vastness of

The night, were new and strange to him. At intervals he heard voices

Approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw nothing more of the

Bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless drifting blur, there was

Something spectral and uncanny about it all that made him shudder.

Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a light — always far away, apparently

— almost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of a sheep's bell, it was

Vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of the herds floated to him on

The night wind in vanishing cadences, a mournful sound; now and then came

The complaining howl of a dog over viewless expanses of field and forest; all

Sounds were remote; they made the little king feel that all life and activity

Were far removed from him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the

Center of a measureless solitude.

He stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new experience,

Startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves overhead, so like

Human whispers they seemed to sound; and by and by he came suddenly upon