just beyond
the reach of my hand. It made objects remote and unreal and singularly
shining. I looked toward the sycamore, and my heart beat fast for a
moment, for I thought that a pool of fresh blood lay in the grass where
the woman and I had sat the day before. But I looked again and saw
that it was only the bunch of red lilies that she had plucked and worn
and thrown away. I had told her that their red was the color of war,
and she had let them drop to the ground. I went to them and picked
them up, and they left heavy, scarlet stains upon my fingers.

When I went to the canoe I found it still damp, but I uncovered it and
went to work to do what I could with the frayed seams. An unreasoning
haste had possession of me, and I worked fumblingly and badly, like a
man with fear behind him. Yet I was not afraid. I was consumed by the
feeling that I must get back to camp and to the woman without delay.

Kneeling to my work with my back to the forest, strange noises came
behind and begged attention. But I would not look up. I had had
enough of visions and whisperings and a haunted wood. I wanted my
canoe and my paddle and a chance to shoot straight and to get home.
For already I thought of the camp as home, and of this meadow as a
place where I had been held for a long time. It was a strange morning.

And so it was that even when I heard the thud, thud of a man's step
behind me I did not turn. A man's step is unlike an animal's, and I
had no doubt in my heart that a man was coming. But let him come to
me. My immediate and pressing concern was to repair my canoe that I
might get to camp, and I would squander neither movement nor eyesight
till that was done. A few moments before it had seemed a vital matter
to find what creatures they were that whispered and rustled past me in
the grayness. Now my anxiety was transferred.

The echoing fog played witchcraft with the step as it had done with the
other noises. The sound came, came, came,--a steady, moderate note; no
haste, no dallying, no indecision. Quiet, purposeful, controlled, it
sounded; that pace, pace, that came through the twig-carpeted timber.
The Greek Fates were pictured as moving with just that even
relentlessness of stride. Yet in life, so far as I have seen it,
tragedies commonly pounce upon us, like a wolfish cat upon her prey,
and we find ourselves stunned and mangled before we gather dignity to
meet the blow. I thought of this, in an incoher