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I do not, however, expose myself to the risk of being irritated by the sight of my willing but mechanical hostess scraping the white ashes from the embers, parcelling out these into little heaps of fire upon the hearth, throwing salt into the swinging pot with a hand the colour of which may be distressing to the imagination, then tasting the soup: all this, and much more, I leave her to accomplish in the gathering darkness of the kitchen, and, sparing her the pain of lighting lamp or candle while there is still a gleam of day, I wander out beyond the houses of the village to a quiet woodside, there to watch the coming of night, which, whether it be accompanied by wailing winds and storm-rack brimming with tears, or by that grand serenity which grows in beauty as the light fails, is always like the coming of death.
For there was no moon, and the stars were often hidden by the storm-rack of leaden clouds that drifted over the sky; and the only sound they heard was the cry of the jackal, or the shriek of the night bird, and now and then the sound of shallow water-courses, where the parched beds of hidden brooks had been filled by the autumnal rain.
The night fell, the stars came out, the storm-rack of a coming tempest drifted over the sky, the train rushed onward through the thickening darkness, through the spectral country it was like his life, rushing headlong down into impenetrable gloom. The best, the uttermost, that he could look for was a soldier's grave, far away under some foreign soil.
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