enceforth they walked in a sea of mist, like men moving in a
nightmare from which they cannot awake. The clammy vapour chilled them
to the bone: while the unceasing wailing of seagulls, borne off the
lough, the whistle of an unseen curlew on the hillside, the hurtle of
wings as some ghostly bird swept over them--these were sounds to deepen
the effect, and depress men who had reason to suspect that they were
being led to a treacherous end.

The Colonel, though he masked his apprehensions under an impenetrable
firmness, began to fear no less than that--and with cause. He observed
that O'Sullivan Og's followers were of the lowest type of kerne,
islanders in all probability, and half starved; men whose hands were
never far from their skenes, and whose one orderly instinct consisted
in a blind obedience to their chief. O'Sullivan Og himself he believed
to be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce,
unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel could
augur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted;
and worse from the manner in which these savage, half-naked creatures,
shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, as if
they fancied they saw the winding-sheet high on his breast.

Some, so placed, and feeling themselves helpless, isolated by the fog,
and entirely at these men's mercy, might have lost their firmness. But
he did not; nor did Bale, though the servant's face betrayed the
keenness of his anxiety. They weighed indeed, certainly the former, the
chances of escape: such chances as a headlong rush into the fog might
afford to unarmed men, uncertain where they were. But the Colonel
reflected that it was possible that that was the very course upon which
O'Sullivan Og counted for a pretext and an excuse. And, for a second
objection, the two could not, so closely were they guarded, communicate
with each other in such a way as to secure joint action.

After all, The McMurrough's plan might amount to no more than their
detention in some secret place among the hills. Colonel John hoped so.

Yet he could not persuade himself that this was the worst that was
intended. He could not but think ill of things; of O'Sullivan Og's
silence, of the men's stealthy glances, of the uncanny hour. And when
they came presently to a point where a faintly marked track left the
road, and the party, at a word from their leader, turned into it, he
thought worse of the m