Then a voice, which in spite of its matter-of-fact reality the obscurity lent a certain mystery to, said:-- "I can't make out anything! Where the devil have we got to, anyway?
It's as black as Tophet, here ahead!" "Strike a light and make a flare with something," returned a second voice.

"Look where you're shoving to--now--keep your horse off, will ye." There was more muffled plunging, a silence, the rustle of paper, the quick spurt of a match, and then the uplifting of a flickering flame.
But it revealed only the heads and shoulders of three horsemen, framed within a nebulous ring of light, that still left their horses and even their lower figures in impenetrable shadow.

Then the flame leaped up and died out with a few zigzagging sparks that were falling to the ground, when a third voice, that was low but somewhat pleasant in its cadence, said:-- "Be careful where you throw that.

You were careless last time.

With this wind and the leaves like tinder, you might send a furnace blast through the woods." "Then at least we'd see where we were." Nevertheless, he moved his horse, whose trampling hoofs beat out the last fallen spark.