y, but still the
haunting face was there.

The thing was absurd, he kept saying to himself. Men shot their fellows
in battle in defence of their country or of their country's cause, and
thought no more about it. Some even bragged of it. Again, in a naval
engagement, when a hostile ship was sunk, did not the other side do all
it could to rescue the survivors struggling in the water? Well, this
was precisely an analogy as regarded his own case, with this difference,
that the rescued in the naval engagement had not the power to injure
their rescuers further, whereas the man he had slain had, and certainly
had the will. Yet, at the last moment, he had honestly attempted to
rescue him, at any rate from that horrible fate.

What was this? Had he taken a wrong path in the course of his
reflections? For his way seemed suddenly barred. A fallen trunk,
massive and rotting with age lay across it, and there seemed no way
round it but cutting one through a dense wall of creepers and coarse
grass. Even then the path seemed to end.

He dismounted and, hitching his horse to a bough, climbed on to the
fallen tree-trunk to reconnoitre. A snake glided off it, hissing, but
too rapidly for him to be able to distinguish the species. No, there
was no way beyond the trunk. It had evidently been disused since it was
blocked, and some other taken. That other way he must have missed, and
the only thing to do would be to find it.

Acting upon this idea he remounted and rode back upon his trail. After
going some distance it occurred to him that the surroundings were
unfamiliar, for he had neglected that safe rule that in travelling on a
strange way for the first time, it is well to look back occasionally to
accustom oneself to it from the contrary direction for purposes of
return; wherein the simile of the "hand to the plough" emphatically does
not hold good.

Ah, here it was! He had left the path even as he had thought. Here was
the right one. Accordingly he put his horse into it, and then
discovered that his said horse was going lame. Carefully he examined
all four hoofs. No, there was no stone or anything of the kind.

This was a blank outlook. The still atmosphere of the forest seemed
more fever-breathing than ever, and the sky had darkened. A boom of
thunder came rolling through the stillness, not so distant either, then
a gleam and then another sullen roll. He started. This was no joke.
He was in for a sudden sto