Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes | Page 4

a tremor of excitement accompanied the memory.
Such a thing had never before been possible to my practical intelligence,
and it made me feel suspicious--suspicious about myself. I stood still a
moment--I looked about me into the gathering mist, above me to the
vanishing stars, below me to the hidden valley, and then sent an urgent
summons to my individuality, as I had always known it, to arrest and
chase these undesirable fancies.
But I called in vain. No answer came. Anxiously, hurriedly, confusedly,
too, I searched for my normal self, but could not find it; and this failure
to respond induced in me a sense of uneasiness that touched very nearly
upon the borders of alarm.
I pushed on faster and faster along the turfy track among the
gorse-bushes with a dread that I might lose the way altogether, and a
sudden desire to reach home as soon as might be. Then, without
warning, I emerged unexpectedly into clear air again, and the vapour
swept past me in a rushing wall and rose into the sky. Anew I saw the
lights of the village behind me in the depths, here and there a line of
smoke rising against the pale yellow sky, and stars overhead peering
down through thin wispy clouds that stretched their wind-signs across
the night.
After all, it had been nothing but a stray bit of sea-fog driving up from
the coast, for the other side of the hills, I remembered, dipped their
chalk cliffs straight into the sea, and strange lost winds must often
come a-wandering this way with the sharp changes of temperature
about sunset. None the less, it was disconcerting to know that mist and
storm lay hiding within possible reach, and I walked on smartly for a
sight of Tom Bassett's cottage and the lights of the Manor House in the

valley a short mile beyond.
The clearing of the air, however, lasted but a very brief while, and
vapour was soon rising about me as before, hiding the path and making
bushes and stone walls look like running shadows. It came, driven
apparently, by little independent winds up the many side gullies, and it
was very cold, touching my skin like a wet sheet. Curious great shapes,
too, it assumed as the wind worked to and fro through it: forms of men
and animals; grotesque, giant outlines; ever shifting and running along
the ground with silent feet, or leaping into the air with sharp cries as the
gusts twisted them inwardly and lent them voice. More and more I
pushed my pace, and more and more darkness and vapour obliterated
the landscape. The going was not otherwise difficult, and here and there
cowslips glimmered in patches of dancing yellow, while the springy
turf made it easy to keep up speed; yet in the gloom I frequently tripped
and plunged into prickly gorse near the ground, so that from shin to
knee was soon a-tingle with sharp pain. Odd puffs and spits of rain
stung my face, and the periods of utter stillness were always followed
by little shouting gusts of wind, each time from a new direction.
Troubled is perhaps too strong a word, but flustered I certainly was;
and though I recognised that it was due to my being in an environment
so remote from the town life I was accustomed to, I found it impossible
to stifle altogether the feeling of malaise that had crept into my heart,
and I looked about with increasing eagerness for the lighted windows
of Bassett's cottage.
More and more, little pin-pricks of distress and confusion accumulated,
adding to my realisation of being away from streets and shop-windows,
and things I could classify and deal with. The mist, too, distorted as
well as concealed, played tricks with sounds as well as with sights. And,
once or twice, when I stumbled upon some crouching sheep, they got
up without the customary alarm and hurry of sheep, and moved off
slowly into the darkness, but in such a singular way that I could almost
have sworn they were not sheep at all, but human beings crawling on
all-fours, looking back and grimacing at me over their shoulders as they
went. On these occasions--for there were more than one--I never could
get close enough to feel their woolly wet backs, as I should have liked

to do; and the sound of their tinkling bells came faintly through the
mist, sometimes from one direction, sometimes from another,
sometimes all round me as though a whole flock surrounded me; and I
found it impossible to analyse or explain the idea I received that they
were not sheep-bells at all, but something quite different.
But mist and darkness, and a certain confusion of the senses caused by
the excitement of an utterly