of trees, the blackness of
the ground looking a bottomless pit under foot, the wall of cliffs
standing up against the stars. But slowly he could find his way to the
creek, across, and along the lake shore.

Again and again he stumbled against a boulder or tree trunk or clump of
bushes. He cursed his eyes for fools, drew back and around the
obstacle and pushed on. He would make little speed this way, but there
might arise the situation in which every moment would be golden.

After a little an inspiration came to him and he acted upon it swiftly.
He let the rope out through his fingers and holding it at the broken
end drove the horse on ahead of him, calculating upon the fact that it
could see even if he could not, and having been over the trail once
would travel it again in the darkness.

So Drennen made his way northward. Now he was making better time,
perhaps a couple of miles an hour. By dawn he would be several miles
ahead of the others, and then he could travel more rapidly.

But, before the dawn came, he must stop. He had come under the cliffs
which stood tall and bleakly forbidding at the upper end of the lake.
The horse came to a dead standstill. If there were a way up here, a
trail through the cliffs, the animal seemed to have no knowledge of it
and Drennen's blind groping could not discover it.

It was only through the mastery of a strong will, long seasoned and
drilled, that Drennen could force himself at last to sit down and wait
the coming of the light. His soul was in turmoil. His mind was filled
with broken fancies, tortured visions. In him the simplicity of a
normal existence had been phantastically twisted into complication.
Before him were Sefton and Lemarc and Garcia . . . and Ygerne Bellaire.
Behind him were George and Ernestine with their warped lives, Sothern
and Max with their souls upon the verge of convulsion. Max, young and
straightforward, his sky clear to the star of his duty, was sleeping in
ignorance, while if he but knew he would be torn a thousand ways. And
it seemed to Drennen that the restless thing in each of these lives,
behind him and in front of him, raised its hissing head to dart venom
into his own breast, to make for unrest and doubt there.

At last the objects about him were slowly restored to their own
individual forms from the void of the night. The trees separated, the
expanse of the lake grew grey and liquid, the cliffs showed their
ancient battle scars. A