He was encompassed by the dreadful belief that the other saw and heard what he could not.
The prostrate man clenched his fists and struck the black ground on which he lay.

There was an intense silence, and then again the grating breath of a hoarse throat that lay among the grass blades babbled forth a multitude of confessions and fiercely-worded supplications which the little lad could neither understand nor remember.
There was a sudden change of attitude and voice.

The lad saw that the man on the grass sat up, and as if he had received an answer, spoke in reply, not now in wailing supplication, but in quick whispered argument.
The lad cowered with a fresh thrill of ghostly terror which burned the mad words into his memory.
"The loss would be to thee of the fairest of thine handmaids, and to her of her own soul, and to me--" but here the words of irritable contention failed in deep choking sobs.

Then, to the lad's perfect dismay, the black figure bounded to its feet and the arms were flung about in the darkness as if wrestling with an unseen enemy.

Now, being desperate, the lad darted forth from his nook; passing in tip-toe rush at the back of this struggling figure, he sped home in his gust of fear, and, with the fantastic secrecy of youth, did not tell what he had heard and seen till years had come and gone..