Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/54

 came, not a flame, but a pale radiance as from some material highly phosphorescent within, dim and feeble as though all but burned out. It was as though some living hand had placed it there but a little while before, behind those sealed-up walls, far down below the ground; a small atom of life, set in the midst of universal death, that smote them with an instant's shock as of something supernatural, not of earth.

Merritt said—"Good God! look at that!" below his breath, and halted, as one in presence of some power which had risen suddenly from the opened grave to mock at men. Confronting them thus, it was uncanny—a sentient thing with an individuality of its own. Deane, staring at it in fascination, said: