And I felt an anguish of soul that no words can speak--an anguish both of horror and shame; and my manhood seemed to ooze from me, and I was weak as a child new born.

Then suddenly there rushed forth a freezing wind, as from an air of ice, and the bones from their whirl stood still, and the buzz ceased, and the mitred skull grinned on me still and voiceless; and serpents darted their arrowy tongues from the eyeless sockets.

And, lo, before me stood (O Hilda, I see it now!) the form of the spectre that had risen from yonder knoll.

With his spear, and saex, and his shield, he stood before me; and his face, though pale as that of one long dead, was stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he stretched his hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang sounded hollow; the gyves broke at the clash--I sprang to my feet, and I stood side by side with the phantom, dauntless.

Then, suddenly, the mitre on the skull changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned, trunkless and harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;--a Thing above giants, with its crest to the stars and its form an eclipse between the sun and the day.