his time dismounted,
observing the dog. He watched him for some minutes from the road. The
moon was bright, the sky at the moment free from cloud.

He himself could see nothing in the gorse, though the dog was
undoubtedly in a high state of excitement. It made frequent rushes
forward, but stopped short of the object that it saw and trembled. It
did not bark outright but rather whimpered--"a curious, shuddering,
crying noise," says Mr. Beckwith. Interested by the animal's
persistent and singular behaviour, he now sought a gap in the hedge,
went through on to the down, and approached the clumped bushes. Strap
was so much occupied that he barely noticed his master's coming; it
seemed as if he dared not take his eyes for one second from what he
saw in there.

Beckwith, standing behind the dog, looked into the gorse. From the
distance at which he still stood he could see nothing at all. His
belief then was that there was either a tramp in a drunken sleep,
possibly two tramps, or a hare caught in a wire, or possibly even a
fox. Having no stick with him he did not care, at first, to go any
nearer, and contented himself with urging on his terrier. This was not
very courageous of him, as he admits, and was quite unsuccessful. No
verbal excitations would draw Strap nearer to the furze-bush. Finally
the dog threw up his head, showed his master the white arcs of his
eyes and fairly howled at the moon. At this dismal sound Mr. Beckwith
owned himself alarmed. It was, as he describes it--though he is an
Englishman--"uncanny." The time, he owns, the aspect of the night,
loneliness of the spot (midway up the steep slope of a chalk down),
the mysterious shroud of darkness upon shadowed and distant objects
and flood of white light upon the foreground--all these circumstances
worked upon his imagination.

He was indeed for retreat; but here Strap was of a different mind.
Nothing would excite him to advance, but nothing either could induce
him to retire. Whatever he saw in the furze-bush Strap must continue
to observe. In the face of this Beckwith summoned up his courage, took
it in both hands and went much nearer to the furze-bushes, much
nearer, that is, than Strap the terrier could bring himself to go.
Then, he tells us, he did see a pair of bright eyes far in the
thicket, which seemed to be fixed upon his, and by degrees also a pale
and troubled face. Here, then, was neither fox nor drunken tramp, but
some human creature, man, woman