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