with my head between my hands, still seeing upon closed eyelids
her figure, the scant frock drawn around it, her cap of dark hair under
a hood, her face moving from change to change. And whether I sat a year
or a minute, clouds had descended when I looked, as they often did in
that lake gorge. So I waited no longer, but followed her.

The fog was brown, and capped the evening like a solid dome, pressing
down to the earth, and twisting smoke fashion around my feet. It threw
sinuous arms in front of me as a thing endowed with life and capable of
molding itself; and when I reached my boat and pushed off on the water,
a vast mass received and enveloped me.

More penetrating than its clamminess was the thought that Madame de
Ferrier was out in it alone.

I tried one of the long calls we sometimes used in hunting. She might
hear, and understand that I was near to help her. But it was shouting
against many walls. No effort pierced the muffling substance which
rolled thickly against the lungs. Remembering it was possible to
override smaller craft, I pulled with caution, and so bumped lightly
against the boat that by lucky chance hovered in my track.

"Is it you, madame?" I asked.

She hesitated.

"Is it you, monsieur?"

"Yes."

"I think I am lost. There is no shore. The fog closed around me so soon.
I was waiting for it to lift a little."

"It may not lift until morning, madame. Let me tie your boat to mine."

"Do you know the way?"

"There is no way. We shall have to feel for the shore. But Lake George
is narrow, and I know it well."

"I want to keep near you."

"Come into my boat, and let me tie the other one astern."

She hesitated again, but decided, "That would be best."

I drew the frail shells together--they seemed very frail above such
depths--and helped her cross the edges. We were probably the only people
on Lake George. Tinder lighted in one boat would scarcely have shown us
the other, though in the sky an oval moon began to make itself seen
amidst rags of fog. The dense eclipse around us and the changing light
overhead were very weird.

Madame de Ferrier's hands chilled mine, and she shook in her thin cape
and hood. Our garments were saturated. I felt moisture trickling down my
hair and dropping on my shoulders.

She was full of vital courage, resisting the deadly chill. This was not
a summer fog, lightly to be traversed. It went dank through the bones.
When I had helped her to a bench, remembe