My door, looking out to the front, was standing wide open; the full
moon had just risen and was filling the night with its mystic splendour.
Putting out my candle, for the house was now all dark and silent, I
softly went out for a stroll. Under a clump of trees not far off I
found an old rustic bench, and sat down on it; for the place was all
such a tangled wilderness of great weeds that walking was scarcely
practicable and very unpleasant.
The old, half-ruined house in the midst of the dusky desolation began
to assume in the moonlight a singularly weird and ghost-like appearance.
Near me on one side was an irregular row of poplar-trees, and the long,
dark lines cast from them by the moon fell across a wide, open space
where the rank-growing thorn-apples predominated. In the spaces between
the broad bands made by the poplar-tree shadows, the foliage appeared
of a dim, hoary blue, starred over with the white blossoms of this
night-flowering weed. About these flowers several big, grey moths were
hovering, suddenly appearing out of the black shadows and when looked
for, noiselessly vanishing again in their mysterious ghost-like manner.
Not a sound disturbed the silence except the faint, melancholy trill
of one small night-singing cicada from somewhere near--a faint, aerial
voice that seemed to be wandering lost in infinite space, rising and
floating away in its loneliness, while earth listened, hushed into
preternatural stillness.
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