the mouth of my tent," he said with
excitement. "The animal has been here again in the night. Dr. Silence,
you really must come and see them for yourself. They're as plain on the
moss as tracks in snow."

But later in the day, while Sangree went off in the canoe to fish the
pools near the larger islands, and Joan still lay, bandaged and resting,
in her tent, Dr. Silence called me and the tutor and proposed a walk to
the granite slabs at the far end. Mrs. Maloney sat on a stump near her
daughter, and busied herself energetically with alternate nursing and
painting.

"We'll leave you in charge," the doctor said with a smile that was meant
to be encouraging, "and when you want us for lunch, or anything, the
megaphone will always bring us back in time."

For, though the very air was charged with strange emotions, every one
talked quietly and naturally as with a definite desire to counteract
unnecessary excitement.

"I'll keep watch," said the plucky Bo'sun's Mate, "and meanwhile I find
comfort in my work." She was busy with the sketch she had begun on the
day after our arrival. "For even a tree," she added proudly, pointing to
her little easel, "is a symbol of the divine, and the thought makes me
feel safer." We glanced for a moment at a daub which was more like the
symptom of a disease than a symbol of the divine--and then took the path
round the lagoon.

At the far end we made a little fire and lay round it in the shadow of a
big boulder. Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to his
companion.

"And what do you make of it all?" he asked abruptly.

"In the first place," replied John Silence, making himself comfortable
against the rock, "it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubted
lycanthropy."

His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. Maloney listened as
though he had been struck.

"You puzzle me utterly," he said, sitting up closer and staring at him.

"Perhaps," replied the other, "but if you'll listen to me for a few
moments you may be less puzzled at the end--or more. It depends how much
you know. Let me go further and say that you have underestimated, or
miscalculated, the effect of this primitive wild life upon all of you."

"In what way?" asked the clergyman, bristling a trifle.

"It is strong medicine for any town-dweller, and for some of you it has
been too strong. One of you has gone wild." He uttered these last words
with great emphasis.

"Gone savage," he added, loo