aped like fantastic and
legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing stream, and to this
day I have only to close my eyes to see again that vivid and hurrying
procession in the air. All about us the pines made black splashes
against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed, had already
begun to fall in big drops.

We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way
back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs,
Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice,
and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguished
lanterns.

Yet it was only a dog!

Really, it was most singular when one came to reflect soberly upon it
all. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least that
agglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned in
them, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great astral shapes
which may become visible to the eye of vision; and certainly here, the
soul of this drive--this vain, blundering, futile drive--stood somewhere
between ourselves and--laughed.

All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the
sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and
with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible
against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might
so easily conceal itself from us, or swim away before we had time to
light upon its trail. For we all spoke of that "trail" as though it
really existed, and we had more to go upon than the mere marks of paws
about the tents of Joan and the Canadian. Indeed, but for these, and the
torn tent, I think it would, of course, have been possible to ignore the
existence of this beast intruder altogether.

And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we stood in the shelter of
the stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited--it
was here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that--very
stealthily--the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood among
us. It made all our explanations seem childish and untrue; the false
relation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged quick, anxious glances,
questioning, expressive of dismay. There was a sense of wonder, of
poignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at our
elbows. We shivered.

Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other's faces, came the long,
unwelcome pause in which this ne