en straggled in after him. At a larger place the
party might have been tempted to tarry, but here they had no thought of
stopping an unnecessary moment. Trenholme had no time to lose, and yet
he hardly knew how to state his case. He sought the Englishman, who was
at the little telegraph table. The engineer and some others lounged
near. He began by recalling the incident of the dead man's
disappearance. Every one connected with the railway in those parts had
heard that story.

"And look here!" said he, "as far as one can judge by description, he
has come back again here to-night." All who could understand were
listening to him now. "See here!" he urged addressing the brisk
telegraph man, "I'm afraid he will freeze to death in the snow. He's
quite alive, you know--alive as you are; but I want help to bring him
in."

The other was attending to his work as well as to Trenholme. "Why can't
he come in?"

"He won't. I think he's gone out of his mind. He'll die if he's left.
It's a matter of life or death, I tell you. He's too strong for me to
manage alone. Someone must come too."

The brisk man looked at the engineer, and the French engineer looked at
him.

"What's he doing out there?"

"He's just out by the wood."

It ended in the two men finding snow-shoes and going with Trenholme
across the snow.

They all three peered through the dimness at the space between them and
the wood, and they saw nothing. They retraced the snow-shoe tracks and
came to the place where the irregular circuit had been made near the end
of the wood. There was no one there. They held up a lantern and flashed
it right and left, they shouted and wandered, searching into the edge of
the wood. The old man was not to be found.

"I dare say," said the telegraph man to Trenholme, "you'd do well to get
into a place where you don't live quite so much alone. 'T'aint good for
you."

The whole search did not take more than twenty minutes. The railway-men
went back at a quick pace. Trenholme went with them, insisting only that
they should look at the track of the stranger's snow-shoes, and admit
that it was not his own track.

The French engineer was sufficiently superstitious to lend a half belief
to the idea that the place was haunted, and that was his reason for
haste. The electrician was only sorry that so much time had been purely
wasted; that was his reason. He was a middle-aged man, spare, quick, and
impatient, but he looked at Alec Trenholme