But my pitiful little oath was all bluster and impotent defiance.  I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck.  I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way.  The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded.  I heard them melt, melt into nothing.  A sound, an impression,—­that had been all.  Not even a gray shadow on the fog to show that I had not been dreaming.  I looked at my skinned knuckles and disordered clothes, and a strange feeling shook me.  A certain rashness of temperament had all my life made me contemptuous of fear.  But this was different.  I tried to laugh at myself, but could not.

It was a simple matter to retrace my route, for I had left a trail like a behemoth’s.  And one thought I chewed all the way back to the meadow.  If I could have done it over again I should have called, and so have drawn whatever thing it was toward me.  That would have been dangerous, and I might have paid the forfeit of a head that was not my own to part with, but at least I should have seen what thing it was that passed me in the fog.  There began to be something that was not wholly sound and sane in the depth of my feeling that I ought, at whatever cost, to have confronted that noise and forced it to declare itself.

When I came to the meadow it was wet and spectral.  The fog had lifted somewhat and now the air was curiously luminous.  It appeared transparent, as if the vision could pierce far-stretching reaches, but when I tried to peer ahead I found my glance baffled a few feet away.  It was as if the world ended suddenly, exhaled in grayness, 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.