Presently he began to wonder about the feet which had made the prints he saw.  Did they belong to a man or a woman?  The prints were too large to have been made by the feet of a child.  He gazed at them searchingly, and made up his mind that it was a man who had recently trodden this road.  And what sort of man was it that thus preceded him not very far away?  He became deeply engrossed with this question.  His mind revolved about this unknown traveler, floating forward in surmises, till, by chance, he happened to set his right foot in one of the prints left in the snow.  His foot exactly filled it.  This fact, he knew not why, startled him.  He stopped, bent down, examined the snow closely, measured very carefully his feet with the prints before him, now rather faintly discerned in the gathering darkness.  The prints might have been made by his own feet.  Having ascertained this, and reflected for a moment, he went forward, now assailed by a growing curiosity as to the personality and character of the stranger.  But perhaps he was not a stranger.  He might surely well be a neighbor, an acquaintance, perhaps even a friend.  The man meant, if possible, to come up with him, whoever he was, and he now hurried along with the intention of joining the unknown whose footprints were the same as his own.

At this point in his sermon Chichester paused for a moment.  And Malling, who seldom felt any thrill at a seance, and who had often remained calmly watchful and alert during manifestations which amazed or terrified others, was aware of a feeling of cold, which seemed to pass like a breath through his spirit.  The congregation about him, perhaps struck by the unusual form of the sermon, remained silent and motionless, waiting.  In his stall sat the rector with downcast eyes.  Malling could not at that moment discern his expression.  His large figure and important powerful head and face showed almost like those of a carven effigy in the lowered light of the chancel.  The choirboys did not stir, and the small, fair man in the pulpit, raising his thin hands, and resting them on the marble ledge, continued quietly, taking up his sermon with a repetition of the last words uttered, “whose footprints were the same as his own.”

Again the cold breath went through Malling’s spirit.  He leaned slightly forward and gazed at Chichester.

For some time the man thus went onward, following the footprints in the snow, but not overtaking any one, and becoming momentarily more eager to satisfy his curiosity.  Then, on a sudden, he started, stopped, and listened.  It had now become very dark, and in this darkness, and the great stillness of night, he heard the faint sound of a footfall before him, brushing through the crisp snow, which lay lightly, and not very deep, on the hard highroad leading to the village on the farther outskirts of which his house was situated.  He could not yet see any one, but he felt sure that the person who made this faint sound was no other than he in whose steps he had been treading.  It would now be a matter of only a minute or two to come up with him.  And the man went on, but more slowly, whether because he was now certain of attaining his object or for some other reason.