the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal trunks rose dimly like columns
of upward smoke. The few fallen trees stretched their huge length into
obscurity, and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles. The strange breath
that filled these mysterious vaults had neither coldness nor moisture;
a dry, fragrant dust arose from the noiseless foot that trod their
bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have been tombs, the fallen trees,
enormous mummies; the silence, the solitude of the forgotten past.
And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like
breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous
gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy
feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more
powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or
as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate. At
times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as
misshapenly, as the phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square object
moving sideways, endways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely
visible feet; then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the
trees and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but always
oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand. The
frequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of some weird
rhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it either
became motionless or faded away.
There was the frightened neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling of
spurs, a shout and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancing
torches in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscurity
that they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed to advance
at their own volition without human guidance, until they disappeared
suddenly behind the interposing bulk of one of the largest trees.
Beyond its eighty feet of circumference the light could not reach, and
the gloom remained inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs were
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