as now visible, the last rays of
the day that had set. It was this world on which the young Englishman
looked as, amazed and somewhat affrighted, he walked round the building,
searching on all sides for the creature that could hardly yet, had it
run away in such a level land, be wholly out of sight.

He went indoors again to make sure that nothing was there, and this time
he made a discovery--his tea was gone from his cup. He gave a shudder of
disgust, and, leaving his food untouched, put on coat and cap, and went
out shutting his door behind him. His spirits sank. It seemed to him
that, had it been midnight instead of this blank, even daylight, had his
unearthly-looking visitant acted in more unearthly fashion, the
circumstances would have had less weird force to impress his mind.

We can, after all, only form conjectures regarding inexplicable
incidents from the successive impressions that have been made upon us.
This man was not at all given to love of romance or superstition, yet
the easy explanation that some man, for purpose of trick or crime, had
hidden in the box, did not seem to him to fit the circumstances. He
could not make himself believe that the eyes he had seen belonged to a
living man; on the other hand, he found it impossible to conceive of a
tea-drinking ghost.

About a quarter of a mile away there was a long grove of birch trees,
the projecting spur of a second growth of forest that covered the
distant rising ground. Towards this Trenholme strode, for it was the
only covert near in which a human being could travel unseen. It was more
by the impulse of energy, however, than by reasonable hope that he came
there, for by the time he had reached the edge of the trees, it was
beginning to grow dark, even in the open plain.

No one who has not seen birch trees in their undisturbed native haunts
can know how purely white, unmarred by stain or tear, their trunks can
be. Trenholme looked in among them. They grew thickly. White--white--it
seemed in the gathering gloom that each was whiter than the other; and
Trenholme, remembering that his only knowledge of the figure he sought
was that it was wrapped in white, recognised the uselessness, the
absurdity even, of hoping to find it here, of all places.

Then he went back to the road and started for Turrifs Settlement.

CHAPTER IX.

The settlement called "Turrifs" was not a village; it was only a
locality, in which there were a good many houses withi