They were getting a last draught of sleep before the awakening.

The gaunt, careworn features and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint light at the dawning, but it dressed the skin of the men in corpselike hues and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead.

The youth started up with a little cry when his eyes first swept over this motionless mass of men, thick-spread upon the ground, pallid, and in strange postures.

His disordered mind interpreted the hall of the forest as a charnel place.

He believed for an instant that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare to move lest these corpses start up, squalling and squawking.