188 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



handy to the shooting-grounds, which he would 

 not enter. He insisted that once he had gone 

 there on a gray, bitter November afternoon to 

 escape the rain which was driving in sheets. 

 He Ut a fire in the kitchen and started to dry 

 his soaked clothes. Suddenly, out of the storm, 

 somebody fumbled at the latch of the door. 

 It opened and a little old woman in gray entered. 

 She did not look at him, and yet a chill seemed 

 to fall on him. Nevertheless he rose and fol- 

 lowed her as she went out into the hall. She 

 went up the steep, narrow stairway. He went 

 after her. She went up the still steeper httle 

 flight that went to the garret. But when he 

 followed there was no one there. He came down- 

 stairs, put on his clothes, took up his heavy 

 fowling-gun, and just as evening fell he started 

 for the mainland along a road which at one 

 point became a causeway. When he reached 

 the causeway the light was dim; but a figure 

 walked alongside the road on the reeds, not 

 bending the tops; and it was a man with his 

 throat cut from ear to ear. 



However, to tell of the crooked beliefs of the 

 men of our own race, who dwell beside the 

 great waters or journey across the world's waste 

 spaces, is aside from what I have to say of the 

 wild hunting companions whose world was peo- 



