And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel’s stories ran through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me.  For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe.  He looked so diminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that his purpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he was dignified.  The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated game together met the fact that we were two men dancing upon the brink of some possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two emotions in my mind was both grotesque and terrifying.

He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I panted after him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare.  And, as I ran, it came upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet, internal way, of many things that he had kept for his own secret consideration; he had been watching, waiting, planning from the very moment we entered the shade of the wood.  By some inner, concentrated process of mind, dynamic if not actually magical, he had been in direct contact with the source of the whole adventure, the very essence of the real mystery.  And now the forces were moving to a climax.  Something was about to happen, something important, something possibly dreadful.  Every nerve, every sense, every significant gesture of the plunging figure before me proclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, the winds, and the face of the earth tell the birds the time to migrate and warn the animals that danger lurks and they must move.

In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered the tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field.  Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold.  There were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible.  Yet Dr. Silence never seemed to falter or hesitate.  He went, diving, jumping, dodging, ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail.  Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up again, I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after its quarry.  And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed—­human pointing it was, psychic pointing, and each time he stopped to point I heard that faint high hissing in the air beyond us.  The instinct of an infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes.

At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his account the night before.  It was long and narrow, filled with dark brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected.  Not a ripple stirred its surface.

“Watch!” he cried out, as I came up.  “It’s going to cross.  It’s bound to betray itself.  The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the direction.”