It was the eeriest experience he had ever had, that nightly trip across
the Coupee;--bad enough when moon or stars afforded him vague and
distorted glimpses of his ghostly surroundings:--ten times worse when
the flicker of his lantern barely kept him to the path, and the broken
gleams ran over the rugged edges and tumbled into the black gulfs at the
sides;--when every starting shadow might be a murderer leaping out upon
him, every foot of the walling darkness the murderer's cover, and every
step he took a step towards death.
A trip, I assure you, that not many men would have been capable of. For
it did not by any means end with the Coupee. When he got to bed of a
night, and fell asleep at last, he was still crossing the Coupee with
his joggling lantern all night long, and suffered things in dreams
compared with which even his actual experiences were but holiday jaunts.
And at times these grisly imaginings came back upon him as he actually
walked the narrow path next night, and it was all he could do to keep
his head and not fling the lantern into the depths of the pit and follow
it.
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