assed me in
a fog. They have been hiding here for a day at least. Show me your
canoe. We must get to camp. Yes, come with me. Come, show me your
canoe."

CHAPTER XX

WHAT I FOUND

Once in the canoe I bade Lord Starling crouch low, and I paddled
fiercely. I breathed hard not from exertion, but like a swimmer
fighting for his breath. I was submerged in waves of terror, yet I had
no name for what I feared. I learned then that there is but one real
terror in the world,--fear of the unseen. The man who feels terror of
an open foe must be a strange craven.

Lord Starling respected my mood and was silent. He sat warily,
shifting his weight to suit the plunging canoe.

"The fog chokes me," he said at length. "How large a camp have you?
Whom did you leave on guard?"

I told him.

"That should be sufficient."

"Not for a concerted attack."

"But who would make a concerted attack?"

I lengthened my stroke till the canoe quivered. "I am not sure. I
have been shadowed. I thought it was by your order. I cannot talk and
paddle, monsieur."

But I could paddle and think. And always I saw the meadow as we had
found it that first day with drifts of white butterflies over the
flowers, and the woods warm and beckoning. How would the meadow look
now?

But when we came to it I thought it looked unchanged, save that the fog
made all things sinister. We crashed through the guarding reeds, and I
let the canoe drive hard upon the sand. No one was in sight, and a
wolf was whining at the edge of the timber. I leaped to the shore.

I think that I called as I stumbled forward. I saw the ashes of a dead
fire, and a cask that had held rum lying with the sides and end knocked
in. Then I saw a dead body.

I did not hasten then. My feet crawled. The body lay sprawled and
limp with its out-stretched fingers clutching. One hand pointed toward
the woman's cabin.

I turned the corpse over. It was Simon. His scarlet head was still
dripping, but his face was untouched. I saw that he had died
despairing, and I laid him back with a prayer on my lips but with the
lust to kill in my heart.

I went through the cabins quickly but methodically. I think that I
made no sound of grief or excitement, but I knew indefinitely that Lord
Starling was following me, and that, at horribly measured intervals, he
gave short, panting groans. But I did not speak to him, nor he to me.

I spoke for the first time at the woma