d was staggered by the evidence it gave;
for this impression, firm and light, had an outward trend, a size, a
slightness, most like a woman's. It was set seaward towards the gorge. He
looked right and left for footprints of return--none were there! A lone
track he saw that led hardly further, growing faint and indistinct, for
the feet had trodden there when the wash of the ebb was recent.

He turned, and following reversely at a run, came to the far wall, where
every sign failed among pools and weedy boulders; circled with all speed,
snatching a sight of every cove and cleft, and then sprang back through
the gorge.

The gloom and the fierce tumult of that outside ravine smote with a shock
upon masculine wits that now had conceived of the presence of a woman
there. Compassion cried, Poor soul! poor soul! without reservation, and
aloud he called hearty reassurance, full-lunged, high-pitched. Though but
a feeble addition to the great noises there, the sea-birds grew restless:
only the sea-birds, no other living thing moved in response.

He made sure of a soon discovery, but he leapt along from boulder to
boulder, hunting into every shadow, and never a one developed a cave; but
he called in vain. The sea limited him to a spare face of the Isle; when
that was explicit, he was left to reckon with his senses, because they
went so against reason.

The irreconcilable void sent him back to the first tangible proof, and
again he stood beside the footprints pondering uneasily. Had he scared a
woman unclothed, who now in the shame and fear of sex crouched perdue?
But no, his search outside had been too thorough, and the firm, light,
even pace was a contradiction.

Up and down he went in close search, but no other sign of human presence
could he find, not a shred of clothing, not a fragment of food. That
single line of naked footprints, crossing the level sands from
inscrutable rock to obliterate sea, gave a positive indication
circumstantially denied on every hand. The bewildered boy reckoned he
would have been better satisfied to have lighted on some uncanny slot of
finned heels and splay web-toes, imperfectly human; the shapely print
excited a contrast image of delicate, stately, perfect womanhood, quite
intolerable to intellect and emotion of manly composition.

The steeps all round denied the possibility of ascent by tender feminine
feet; for they thwarted his stout endeavour to scale up to the main rock
above, that from t