It was not, I suppose, a great Forest, but to-day it seemed as though we were winding further and further, through labyrinth after labyrinth of clouding obscurity, winding towards some destination from which we could never again escape.

"Pum--pum--pum," whispered the cannon; "Whirr--whirr--whirr," the shadowy trembling background echoed.

Then with a sudden lifting of the curtain Vulatch was revealed to us.
Ruined towns and villages were, by this time, no new sight to me, but this place was different from anything that I had ever seen before.
From the bend of the little hill we looked down upon it and the sight of it made me shudder.

It was the deadest place, the _deadest_ place in the world--all white under the sun it lay there like the bleached bones of some animal picked clean long ago by the birds.
Not a sound came from it, not a movement could be discerned in it.

I could see, standing out straight from the heart of it, what must have been once a fine church.