Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 2).djvu/179

 birds, hovering around their roosts. Here and there a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapour, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled, and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper, to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.

Of this scene, so chillingly in accordance with the past, Duncan stood for many minutes a rapt observer. His eyes wandered from the bosom of the mound, where the foresters were seated around their glimmering fire, to the fainter light, which still lingered in the skies, and then rested long and anxiously on the embodied gloom, which lay like a dreary void on that side of him where reposed the dead. He soon fancied that inexplicable sounds arose from the place, though so indistinct and stolen, as to render not only their nature, but even their existence, uncertain. Ashamed of his apprehensions, the young man turned towards the water, and strove to divert his