As Courtland had taken little note of the trail, he had no idea of his
own whereabouts. He knew he must return to the fringe of cypress to be
able to cross the open field and gain the negro quarters, where it was
still possible that Cato had fled. Taking a general direction from the
few stars visible above the opening, he began to retrace his steps. But
he had no longer the negro's woodcraft to guide him. At times his feet
were caught in trailing vines which seemed to coil around his ankles
with ominous suggestiveness; at times the yielding soil beneath his
tread showed his perilous proximity to the swamp, as well as the fact
that he was beginning to incline towards that dread circle which is the
hopeless instinct of all lost and straying humanity. Luckily the edge of
the swamp was more open, and he would be enabled to correct his changed
course again by the position of the stars. But he was becoming chilled
and exhausted by these fruitless efforts, and at length, after a more
devious and prolonged detour, which brought him back to the swamp again,
he resolved to skirt its edge in search of some other mode of issuance.
Beyond him, the light seemed stronger, as of a more extended opening
or clearing, and there was even a superficial gleam from the end of the
swamp itself, as if from some ignis fatuus or the glancing of a pool of
unbroken water. A few rods farther brought him to it and a full view of
the unencumbered expanse. Beyond him, far across the swamp, he could see
a hillside bathed in the moonlight with symmetrical lines of small white
squares dotting its slopes and stretching down into a valley of gleaming
shafts, pyramids, and tombs. It was the cemetery; the white squares
on the hillside were the soldiers' graves. And among them even at that
distance, uplifting solemnly, like a reproachful phantom, was the broken
shaft above the dust of Chester Brooks.

With the view of that fateful spot, which he had not seen since his last