up from her knees after close examination of the muddy
trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air -- stood
with delicate nostrils quivering -- advanced, still conscious of the
taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.

She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke.
Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might
be distant. _Whose fire?_ Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a
fire?

The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.

Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she
moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more
distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of
smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.

After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured
to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.

In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a
spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.

The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she
could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh;
contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the
heels.

A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole,
peeled it; saw, further on, where this unknown man had probed in moss
and mud -- peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of
holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there.

Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley
trail probing the darkness with a pole?

She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native -- none of her
father's men -- would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these
have left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.

As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head
incessantly to listen an peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught
something ahead -- something very slightly different from the wall of
black obscurity -- a vague hint of colour -- the very vaguest tint
scarcely perceptible at all.

But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.

Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke
grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish.
All about her the blackness seemed palpable -- seemed to touch her body
with its