e sea,
haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the other side of the house are the
plantations and pine-woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go first
to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last night. It's quite near."

We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled the deep baying of the
night when a fine bloodhound and two great Danes leaped out to greet us.
Singular companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we struck out
across the fields and the great creatures bounded and ran beside us,
nose to ground.

The conversation was scanty. John Silence's grave face did not encourage
talk. He wore the expression I knew well--that look of earnest
solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed and
preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious often--it
always moved me to witness it--and he was anxious now.

"On the way back you shall see the laundry building," Colonel Wragge
observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. "We shall attract
less attention then."

Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the
feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as
we went.

In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees concealed the house from
view, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a densely grown
plantation of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, and, producing
a map from his pocket, explained once more very briefly its position
with regard to the house. He showed how it ran up almost to the walls
of the laundry building--though at the moment beyond our actual
view--and pointed to the windows of his sister's bedroom where the fires
had been. The room, now empty, looked straight on to the wood. Then,
glancing nervously about him, and calling the dogs to heel, he proposed
that we should enter the plantation and make as thorough examination of
it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he added, might perhaps be
persuaded to accompany us a little way--and he pointed to where they
cowered at his feet--but he doubted it. "Neither voice nor whip will get
them very far, I'm afraid," he said. "I know by experience."

"If you have no objection," replied Dr. Silence, with decision, and
speaking almost for the first time, "we will make our examination
alone--Mr. Hubbard and myself. It will be best so."

His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel acquiesced so politely
that even a less intuitive man than myself must have seen that he was