But what did those crosses mean, that stood out so solemnly and eerily in the night, at the foot of each mound? At first he had not noticed them against the dark background of the woods. They were three in number. Roughly hewn out of fir trunks, they were so firmly planted in the earth, that they did not move a hair's-breadth when he shook them. They bore no inscription, and if they had, he would not have been able to read it. Inscrutable as memorials of forgotten misfortune, they stood ranged there in the dim moonlight like rugged sentinels.
And then the mystery was solved. He saw what they were. With a loud cry he dropped his face in his hands. He had stumbled on the graves of the men who had fallen on that accursed night in the year '7. Here lay the bones of his father's victims. What evil chance had led him here to-night? Or was it chance? Had not a thousand invisible arms beckoned him cajolingly and irresistibly along this maniacal route, and let him fight his way through snow and ice, till he was ready to faint from exhaustion? It seemed as though fate had kept in reserve the most excruciating lash of her scourge till this hour of his bitterest humiliation; so that he should no longer be in doubt as to there being any salvation in store for him, and to demonstrate once for all that he was doomed to sink for ever under the weight of shame and despair.
"But it is well that I came," he said, conversing with himself; "where better can I convince myself that the old pastor's curse was not unjust--and that what was not a sin, has become one?"
His eyes wandered over the row of flattened graves, and now there seemed no end to them.... How many were buried there? If they had been closely packed, a hundred or more might rest in each grave--or perhaps even double that number. And they had all been brave soldiers who had left their homes gaily, in light-hearted devotion to fight for King and Fatherland.... Through foulest treachery they had been butchered here in cold blood, under cover of night.
He clung to one of the crosses, and held his face so tightly against the rough wood that splints dug into his flesh.
"Arraign him before the whole world!" something cried within him--"him and _her_--and then go with her to perdition."